IMPHAL, June 24: Manipur Chief Electoral Officer, O Nabakeshor today called a press conference on the pre-revision activities of electoral roll, 2013 taken up under the instruction of the ECI.
The press conference was held at his office chamber at the North Block, Manipur Secretariat.
He said, he had called a meeting with the representatives of all political parties present in the state, DCs of all districts and the Electoral Returning Officer in his office chamber discussing the issue.
He continued that the meeting had at length discussed the issues regarding distribution of photo voter slip to the voters through the Block Level Officers (BLO) to verify any errors, internal exercise of the EROs/ DEOs for the rationalization of polling station, draft publication of the rationalisation list of the polling stations to invite claims and objections and finalization of the rationalisation lists of the polling station.
Elaborating further, the officer said that several errors have been found in the Photo Electoral rolls with the most common errors being spelling mistakes of names, relationship status, wrong gender, age and photo mismatch, though most voters seem to be unaware of the mistakes and as such efforts to correct such errors are on.
He continued that the Election commission of India had instructed for the preparation of voter slips for all voters containing their photographs and other details for distribution to the voters through the BLOs.
In accordance to the ECI instruction, the Chief electoral officer (ECO) Manipur has prepared the photo voter slips and made them available to the BLOs through the concern EROs for distribution to the voters by visiting house to house in between June 17 to July 6 so that the voters can verify their particulars and fill up the required forms for correction, he said.
Elaborating further, he said that the CEO, Manipur has also prepared a report on the possible error of one voter registered in several polling stations, and the presence of a large number of eligible voters above the age of 80 in a single family, using software customised by the technical section of the CEO, Manipur office.
The reports have already been made available to the BLOs through their concern EROs for the BROs to verify it during their house to house visit, he said.
He also said that under Section 17 and 18 of the Representative of the People Act 1950 no person is entitled to be registered in more than one constituency and for any constituency more than once so to check out and to verify the duplicate voters, the CEO office has developed software to find out duplicate electoral and altogether 14908 possible duplicate electors have been identified in the photo electoral rolls 2013 and the report has been provided to the BLOs through the concern EROs to verify it and submit the findings to the concern EROs for further necessary action, he said.
He continue saying that they had received many complaints regarding the address indicated in the EPIC card as not in tune with the complainants postal address.
Regarding that the BLOs has also been instructed to verify the villages, localities of the voters with the correct postal address for proper segregation of villages and localities into sections within the polling station and appeal to all the voters and the political parties for co-operation in correcting it.
He also said that the pre-revision activities for rationalisation of polling stations at the district level have been instructed to be completed by July 25, 2013.