Photo electoral rolls to be published on June five, says CEO

Shimla, Mar 20 (UNI) Photo electoral rolls of all the 68 assembly constituencies of Himachal Pradesh will be published by June five, making it the fourth state after Kerala, Puducherry, and Haryana to achieve this feat, State's Chief Electoral Officer Manisha Nanda today said.

The electoral rolls for Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha constituencies were now being converted into photo electoral rolls, which would be a necessity during polling in the future, she said at a training programme for the Masters Trainers here.

Tehsildars, naib tehsildars and election kanungos of the state election department were also present in the meeting.

Ms Nanda said in the new electoral rolls, the photograph of the voter would also be shown along with his or her name, sex, age and address and would completely wipe out any possibility of bogus voting in the elections.

Electoral rolls in six assembly segments of Kinnuar and Solan districts have already been converted into photo electoral rolls, while draft photo electoral rolls of 17 Assembly constituencies of Hamirpur Lok Sabha Constituency had already been published on February 26th, she said.

She said the final rolls of these assembly seats would be published on April 10, adding the publication of remaining 45 assembly constituencies would be completed by June five.

In all, 2946 booth level officers have been appointed by the state government in all the 6,232 polling stations of the state for Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, she said.

The CEO said these officers had been appointed from among the field level officials like revenue patwaris, panchayat secretaries and school teachers and their appointment would be of permanent nature.

The main reason for organising training was to sensitise and prepare them for the publication of photo electoral rolls, coverage of residual voters in the forthcoming electors photo identity cards (EPCI) campaign and to give publicity in their areas about the schedule of annual revision of the rolls, she added.

UNI