IMPHAL, Jul 15 (DIPR): Electoral exercises to prepare for the forthcoming State Assembly elections have begun, said Oinam Naba-kishore Singh, Chief Secretary, Government of Manipur who is also the Chief Electoral Officer while addressing a press conference organized by DIPR at its premises here today.
He said that electoral roll revision has started and the draft electoral roll would be published in September 2016. He further said the term of the present Assembly ends on March 18, 2017 and hence elections have to be done before that.
So far there has been no announcement of dates for the elections, he added. Checking of EVMs will begin from tomorrow. In the next elections, mobile applications will be used to monitor the elections. Possibility of online voting is in the pipeline, he added. Central paramilitary forces in adequate numbers will be used in the elections and live streaming of polling stations will be done as done in the last election.
Rationalisation of polling stations has been carried out and the Election Commission of India has been requested to increase the number of polling stations which is presently 2704.
N Praveen, Joint CEO said the department introduced a new software which was developed by the Department for drawing of GIS Map using google earth upto polling station level (Google Mapping of the polling stations) and Booth Area layout and site mapping (by using Auto-CAD) of all polling stations are being done in addition to the standardization and locating the exact position of polling station through latitude and longitude.
He appealed to the voters to provide correct information and change the data related to change of address, death etc so that the electoral roll can be accurate. He further said there are some problems related to gender gap in the electoral roll. As per electoral roll, there are 1039 females per 1000 men. However, as per census report the female-male ratio is 937:1000. It was found that there are about 1.4 lakh women above 30 years of age who are still living with their parents. Married women should change their polling stations by contacting the concerned officials, he added.
There are problems related to non inclusion of youth in the electoral rolls who have attained the age of 18 and only 10,000 people were included every year when it was estimated that the number of youth in the 17 to 19 age group increases by 70000.
State Election Department has 24 branch offices. The Chief Electoral Officer, who is responsible to the Election Commission of India, has the statutory responsibility of supervising the preparation of electoral rolls and conduct of Assembly, Parliamentary and Presidential elections in the State and assisting the Delimitation Commission in the delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary Constituencies subject to overall control, direction and supervision of the Election Commission of India.
Election Department conducts Special Summary Revision of Photo Electoral Roll every year with January 1 of that year as the qualifying date. The Electoral Roll published with January 1, 2016 as the qualifying date has 18, 26,962 number of voters with 8, 95,957 males and 9, 31,005 female voters. 53041 voters were newly registered electors in the recently published Electoral Rolls-2016.
The department prepares electoral rolls of the 60 Assembly segments, prepare and issue Electors Photo Identity Cards, conduct election to the House of the People and State Legislative Assembly as well as the Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections and assist the Delimitation Commission. To bring forth a comprehensive, inclusive and error-free Electoral Roll (ER) in 2009-10, images of the electors were captured and reproduced in the Photo Electoral Roll (PER) where around 70 pc images of electors were in the PER. The Elector’s Photo Identity Card (EPIC) was also issued from 2009-10 onwards.
In 2011, a number of search facilities were put in place for electors to gain easy access for obtaining information by launching websites like http://erms.man.nic.in and http://erms.man.nic.in/websearch.aspx as well as citizen centric service site http://164.100.34.138/CS.
A new software was developed by the Department for generation of image de-duplication and anomaly in particulars of electors and instructions were issued to the District Election Officers for taking up necessary action at their end.
The official website www.ceomanipur.nic.in provides online registration of eligible voters and correction of particulars of voters were introduced to help the public get accessed to the facilities hitherto unavailable. Other facilities include search site for application status, elector search, electoral roll and know your Booth Level Officer (BLO).
The Election Commission of India initiated National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) in 2015 and National Electoral Roll Purification (NERP) in 2016 for producing error-free, single entry for eligible voter, no multiple, absent, shifted and dead entries in electoral rolls. The State Election Department is taking up various measures and campaigns to purify and produce error-free electoral roll.
Right from its inception, Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) has been a programme of multi-prong intervention for greater electoral participation for a stronger Democracy through the provision of information, motivation and facilitation.
SVEEP programme has become a significant development activities and efforts for augmenting electoral participation through registration and turnout in elections and increasing qualitative participation in terms of ethical and informed voting.
One laudable initiative taken up the ECI, commemorating its foundation day, was instituting the celebration of National Voters’ Day (NVD) on January 25 every year since 2011 with the aim of generating a sense of responsibility and to encourage especially the young eligible voters to enrol in the electoral roll and exercise their adult franchise judiciously and prudently.
The IT section of the Department has also put in place various initiatives in tune with the directives of the ECI with a sole objective of making available citizen-centric services to the electorates. They are monthly progress monitoring dashboard, E-Roll monitoring, data entry for election monitoring, election monitoring dashboard, polling station location map services, National voter service dashboard, IIDEM training material and monthly progress report. Assistant Chief Electoral Officer, Manipur N Angangjao Singh also attended the conference.
