Photos to be displayed on voters lists in Ajnala

Amritsar, Jan 7 (UNI) Ajnala will be the first assembly constituecy in India where in addition to the Photo Identity Cards (PIC), photographs of the voters will be displayed in the voters lists at all the 160 polling stations.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has chosen the Ajnala segment falling in the Amritsar Parliamentary constituency to experiment with this new format. If this experiment succeeds, then there is a possibility that the ECI may ask the other states to affix the photographs of voters alongside their names in all voters lists.

Official sources told UNI here that intially the ECI had chosen Ajnala, Moga and Patiala constituencies out of the 117 segements for this experiment. However Moga and Patiala were latter dropped and Ajnala was chosen, as along with the assembly polls, the Amritsar Lok Sabha bye-election is also being held on February 13.

Ajnala, with a voting strength of 1,46,071, is a predominantly rural constituency with the Ravi river flowing along the Indo-Pakistan border at one end of the segment.It is the only assembly segment in the state where in addition to the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, two assembly bye-elections have also been held in recent times, that is in 1993 and 2004.

UNI