Photo Electoral Rolls to be introduced in 2009 LS polls: CE

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, May 9 (UNI) The Election Commission has decided to introduce Photo Electoral Rolls (PER) at the time of the next general elections in 2009, said the Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami Talking to UNI, Mr Gopalaswami felt that the introduction of PER would help in bringing further improvement in the present election system.

He said it would further reduce the number of bogus voters and drastically reduce the chances of bogus voting.

In fact the Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) and the PER would work as complementary to each other. The introduction of PER would discourage the people to go in for large number of EPIC as the proposed system is expected to be effective in tackling the duplicate electors, he added.

He said the process of making PER have already began and been completed in Kerala and Puducherry. Punjab, Harayana, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan would be completing the process in this year itself.

Mr Gopalaswami said the EC has observed that the present system of booth wise counting of votes from the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) leaves enough room to identify the cluster of voters and it has an adverse affect on the vulnerable sections of the society. In order to ensure free and fair polls the commission intends to bring about an amendment in the present act so that a cluster of EVMs could be clubbed together and the votes could be counted thereafter.

This process is expected to eliminate the chances of identifying any group of voters.

He said in order to bring about this change in the act the commission intends to call an all party meeting to remove any apprehensions.

Mr Gopalaswami regretted that Indian democracy which has already crossed the sixty years milestone still requires somebody else to oversee their actions.

Responding to questions whether the Commission would suggest or recommend to the Government not to deploy the local police at the time of the State assembly elections and rather they should go in for Central Para-military forces, Mr Gopalaswami said that will be a "sad day" for the Indian democracy. The system should rather learn to correct itself, he added.

Responding to questions on electoral reforms and how to eliminate the criminalisation in politics Mr Gopalaswami said, " I personaly feel that the recommendations in this respect are very much valid and could be made operational with some minor changes here and there and if required some clauses could even be dropped." He said the number of registered political parties is increasing day by day and a large number of these political parties never took part in the election process of the country.

These parties are registered with specific objectives and in many cases only one person represents the party but they have other interest in keeping these political outfits alive.

Mr Gopalaswami said some time back they have sought permission from the Government to de-recognise all those political parties which do not take part in the election process but the Government has not given a favourable reply.

For all practical purpose the commission should have the power to de-recognise a registered political party, Mr Gopalaswami emphasised.

However, the commission enjoys the power under rule 16A to withdraw the symbol of any registered recognised political party if it is found to have violated the concerned sections on the Election acts and rules.

UNI

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