The Election Commission of India is planning to use the Common Services Cen-tres (CSCs) to provide electoral ô voter service to rural citizens. These centres will take up jobs including data entry, inclusion of names and others, according to the commission’s statement.
The electoral rolls are updated annually during the ‘summary revision’. Under the present scheme, while the staff attend to claims and objections received during the annual revision exercise, names of those unable to apply get left out of the e-rolls.
Although the updation of ‘e-roll’ is generally carried out annually for which the schedule is laid down by the Election Commission, the Electoral Registration System in India is essentially in the nature of continuous updation, according to law.
“However, due to the pressures on the staff of various other schemes and programmes of the government and lack of adequate infrastructure, the official machinery is unable to attend to the continuous updates round the year.”
The Government of India, has envisioned the CSCs as the front-end delivery points for services to rural citizens’ in an integrated manner. The CSCs have been designed as lT-enabled kiosks, having a personal computer with basic support like printer, scanner, UPS, the connectivity as the backbone; and additional equipment for various purposes. The CSC is indicated as a one-stop solution through e-kiosks managed by the Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) by providing web-enabled anytime-anywhere access to services and information in rural areas.
The Election Commission of India had accorded in-principle approval to provide electoral/voter service through CSCs and invited attention to the earlier instructions of the commission for piggybacking on infrastructure set up under the government schemes.
It is now proposed to take up the data entry and printing of Forms 6/8A for inclusion/transposition of names and Forms 8 for correction of entries in the electoral roll and scanning of photo or digital image capture in the CSCs.
To start with, the commission has chosen districts of Tiruvanamalai and Krishnagiri to begin with on a pilot basis. These CSCs are operated by SREI-Sahaj - e-Village Limited with which a MoU was signed today.
Depending on the satisfactory implementation of the scheme, the area covered under the scheme would be expanded, said the commission.
“This will be the first G2C (Government 2 Citizen) service in the state or more appropriately Election Commission to Citizen Service through the CSCs,” added the statement.
The state government through Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) is setting up 5,440 common services centres (CSCs) in rural areas through the public private partnership initiative, followed by equal number of Centres in the urban areas to offer Business to Citizen (B2C) and G2C services.
