The next Lok Sabha elections would be conducted on the basis of pictorial voter lists for the first time in the country, except in three states. These lists will contain stamp-sized pictures of the voters along with other details like names and addresses.
This will be a step to curb false voting further.
According to Election Commission (EC) sources, the new lists will be ready by the end of February 2009.
Currently, pictorial voter lists are almost ready in most of the states. “The preparations are faster in smaller states as there are fewer voters in states like Kerala, Haryana, and Union Territories like Delhi and Puducherry,” said an official.
While many of the bigger states like Bihar are lagging behind in completing the pictorial list, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh are remarkably ahead in the task. “In West Bengal, we have completed 95 per cent of the lists and in UP 80 per cent of the work is already done,” said a senior official.
The three states where the new voter lists have not been prepared are Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Nagaland. EC sources cite law and order problems as the biggest deterrents in this areas in preparing the rolls.
Manipur, another trouble-prone state, will be an interesting exception as it will be the only state where the voters will have pictorial lists but won’t carry any electoral photo identity cards (or EPICs) with them. For the last few years, issuing of EPICs have been stopped in this north-eastern state following stiff resistance from local insurgents.
Security forces raiding the homes of the insurgents used to pick up the EPICs for future identification of the underground elements. In many areas, panicky insurgents not only destroyed their families’ EPICs but had destroyed the cards of the whole neighbourhood. Finding the whole exercise of issuing the EPICs futile, the EC has finally decided to postpone it.
In some states, old and mismatched photographs are creating problems in preparing an updated list. “There are photos taken almost 10-12 years ago. But the voters don’t resemble these now. This is particularly in case of young voters.
In some states the entire photo archives are missing so we have to make the list afresh,” says an official.
Urban areas represent another problem. As job migration is high, many voters, who had earlier gone to have their photo taken either for the electoral list or EPICs, are not available in case the cards/lists turn out to be faulty.
