COMMENTS

Karnataka's electoral rolls have always been a problem because of the dynamic and migrant population, especially the IT crowd. In fact, there was tremendous pressure on the EC to postpone Karnataka assembly elections in 2008 because electoral lists weren't ready. We declined, saying electoral lists are dynamic; there cannot be a finality to them. The lists are a lot better now compared with what they were five to six years ago.

Flawed electoral lists are characteristic of metros such as Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Voters also have a duty to find out if their names are on the rolls. There is no point waking up at the last minute and flooding the EC with applications.

For the full text of the interview of Mr SY Quraishi, former CEC, in the ToI, click here

Neither is Mr Deepak Parekh in Mumbai a migrant, nor my son's father-in-law in Bengaluru, both of whom have been living at their current addresses for years together, and voting in all of the past elections too, but who found their names deleted this time aroound. And, there are plenty like them. So, Mr Quraishi needs to come up with something better if he wants to cover up for the incapacity of his ex-colleagues.

The whole approach and processing have to be re-visited, by professionals, and the maintenance too has to be by professionals. And, being the first step in the democratic process, its importance is paramount.

• thumb_up 29 Likes
• · login or register to post comments

Some processes are under way albeit at back end.  Extract of my mail to Mr.Neelekani and his reply both dated 7-1-2010 appear relevant here as also my article in KAARANJI (1-15 Jan.2010 issue) link that demands Electoral Reforms and 'Vote from Where You Are' proposal with bio-metric affirmations, shell based firewalls, multi-level password protections with public and private key operations for securing the data bases and putting IT into a major player for ensuring better governance, transparency and accountability.  

=========

Dear Nandan,

Trust this finds you in the best of health and cheers.

Afraid of Electoral Reforms?  

http://www.kaaranji.com/jan2010_1/index.htm; English pages –

xxx  xxx  It is an article that includes a point as to whether UID can help increase voting from 'where you are' (a.ka.a - ATM) for participatory democracy and for majority voters rule. Kindly have a look and your considered views will be appreciated.

With warm regards

Vasanthkumar Mysoremath

7-1-2010

 ---------------

Dear Vasanthkumar,

                                          Thank you for your article. UID can certainly be used for election purposes and ultimately for remote voting over Internet etc. I feel however that this may come at a later stage in the UID deployment.

Warm Regards,

Nandan

7-1-2010

===============

After the GE 2014 elections, we may consider creating a pressure group for ushering in the changes of 'Giving a Break - revisiting approach and processes' for better democratic governance, as you have pointed out.

Vasanthkumar Mysoremath

• thumb_up 28 Likes
• · login or register to post comments

Cdr P G Bhat, the well-meaning crusader for more accurate electoral rolls, has, like at every election for nearly a decade, once again tried to bring to the attention of the EC, SEC, BBMP combo, in charge of preparing the list, the very many anomalies in it, both old and new. And, like always, he kept the public informed too, through his posts on various google-groups, the latest of which reads as below:

Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka (CEO-KA) has published the list of applications for inclusion in the electoral rolls. 3,66,640 of 4,65,377 applications are approved. However, a search for voter names (with relative names) as given in the list show that more than 99% of these names are not added to the voter list for the forthcoming BBMP elections. Either the citizens are not included as voters though their applications are shown approved or the names are entered differently from what is shown in the approved list.

Of 58,097 applications for deletion of names from voter lists, 44,730 are approved. Sample checks with EPIC numbers show that none of these records is deleted.

After the elections the authorities will put blame on voter apathy for poor turnout.

Election after election it's the same story, proving very clearly that the EC, SEC, BBMP combo don't have the capacity (nor can they build the capacity) to compile and maintain the voters' list to any reasonable degree of accuracy, as was stated in the opening post in this blog, way back in 2010. It was also stated that the only answer lay in outsourcing of the job to reputed professional agencies, quite like Passport office, Income Tax dept, and others have already done, benefiting all the stake-holders involved.

Apparently, the citizens are still to wake up to this reality, and very obviously, there's no redemption till that happens and the demand arises for professionalisation of the job.

• thumb_up 31 Likes
• · login or register to post comments

The Election Commission has suspended its five-month-old project to clean the electoral rolls by linking and authenticating voter I-card details with Aadhaar data, days after the Supreme Court ruled that the unique identification number could be used only for PDS and LPG distribution schemes.

For the full text of the report in the ToI, click here.

Apparently, the EC was banking on Aadhaar to straighten out its otherwise largely inaccurate voter lists, as also to integrate it across the country. Now that the SC has closed that option, and the present team up with NIC doesn't appear to have the capacity to udertake the task, it's perhaps time they looked for a more professional organisation to team up with.

The country cannot afford to continue with the far from accurate voter lists they have been churning out, election after election, and the distortion caused to the electoral process thereof.

• thumb_up 25 Likes
• · login or register to post comments

With about a fortnight left for the Lok Sabha elections, goof-ups in data consolidation by the state and central election offices have left the officials with two different sets of data for number of registered voters across categories. More than 5,000 voters from the ‘Others’ category have disappeared from the state electoral rolls. Officials blame this on duplication and error in the counting process itself. Either ways, the Election Commission (EC) has 8,453 people in the ‘Others’ category on its rolls, while the state has just 3,957. Officials are now scrambling to fix the error in order to ascertain the exact number of voters for the April 17 polls. - - - -He claimed that the CEO Karnataka data was accurate and that the entry of data at the polling station-levels may have cumulated into a bloated figure due to programming errors. “Entering data for the electoral rolls is done by us. But there were programming problems because of which the addition was not done properly. It is not a human error,” he said.

For the full report in the New Indian Express, click here.

How long do we have to live with this mediocrity in the very first step of our democratic process? Isn't it obvious that between the EC, SEC and BBMP, they can't ever get down to giving us a voter list of a reasonable level of accurcacy, and deriving from that, isn't it obvious that the entire job of preparation and maintenance of voters' list has to be outsourced to professional outfits?

Even as I was composing this post, a political activist friend called to ask what to do when a name is found to be missing from the list, at this stage. I said that very little can be done about it as far as this election is concerned. The person whose name is missing will very likely have to go through the process of filing Form-6, all over again, after the elections.

I also added that the position has been this way from the very beginning, and neither the political parties nor the Civil Society seem too keen to bring about effective change. The activist friend was livid.

Well, I would like to believe that I have one more person beginning to talk my language.
 

• thumb_up 35 Likes
• · login or register to post comments