95.23 per cent TN electorate size covered for photo rolls

Chennai, Oct 5 (UNI) About 95.23 per cent of the electorate size of Tamil Nadu was covered in the preparation of Photo rolls.

Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta told reporters here today that the exercise of preparation of photo rolls was taken after last year's Assembly polls and 95.23 per cent of the electorate size of the State was covered till September this year.

He said Dindigul, Namakkal and Karur districts have achieved 100 per cent coverage, while Vellore, Villuppuram, Cuddalore, Erode, Trichy, Nagapattinam, Tirvarur, Pudukottai and Krishnagiri have attained a coverage between 99 to 100 per cent.

All the other districts, except Coimbatore and Chennai were in the range of 90 to 99 per cent. The coverage in Coimbatore, which stood at 87.72 per cent, would reach 90 per cent in a week's time.

In Chennai, the coverage at present was 78.39 per cent and it would touch 84 per cent once the collected photos were scanned and included in the Electoral Rolls data base.

The number of mismatch in the City was about two per cent of the total electoral size. Photos were being collected again in these cases.

With a view to covering all the electors, the constituency wise coverage was taken up in Chennai in July. So far Anna Nagar, Harbour, Thousand Lights, Triplicane, Mylapore and Saidapet have been covered. The process was on in Puraswalkam Assembly Constituency.

In other constituencies like Egmore, Chepauk, T Nagar, Perambur, Park Town, R K Nagar and Royapuram, the photo roll process would be taken up from October ten to November 27 to reach 88 per cent coverage.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has instructed the DEOs of all states to set up Booth Level Offices before the commencement of next revision of rolls with January one, 2008 as the qualifying date.

The BLO system was to identify all the surplus and missing names of electors and take further action for their deletion and inclusion as the case may be.

UNI