Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Seven parties given say in revision of voter list

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD NOV. 25. Seven political parties in the State have been authorised by the Election Commission, apart from registered colony residents' welfare associations and gram panchayats, for recommending names in bulk/individual enrolment of voters under the `summary revision of electoral rolls", being taken up in the State from November 27 to January 15.

The seven parties are the Telugu Desam, Congress, BJP, CPI, CPI(M), Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar and the BSP. The privilege has been allowed to the last six based on the recognition given to them by the Commission as national parties, while the first gets it as it is a state-level recognised party.

For the first time, the Commission recognised the concept of "grama sabha" used by the Andhra Pradesh Government for establishing the identity of villagers for conferring benefits under various Governmental schemes, and wants to utilise this for electoral rolls revision.

The secretary of the gram panchayat accordingly, will convene "grama sabah" at the village accompanied by the designated election official, and recommed the names for inclusions or deletions having finalised them after posing the list to the villagers.

The facility has been extended to residents' welfare associations also in view of the fact that they are, of late, emerging as comprehensive bodies taking care of all issues relating to Government also on behalf of the apartments. According to the Chief Electoral Officer, M. Narayana Rao, who provided all these details here on Tuesday, the political parties, welfare associations and gram panchayat officials will be held responsible if any name recommended by them is found to be false. Responsible persons from these agencies would be required to attest the forms.

He said, the reform involving political parties, residents' associations, and gram panchayats has been introduced, considering the repeated suggestions coming from politicl parties and groups that there should be public involvement in revision.

For making the present exercise successful, they were undertaking campaign through tom-toming in villages, slides in cinema-houses and TV telecasts.

Mr Rao said, the revised electoral rolls which would be final after inclusions and deletions, would be published on January 20. He hoped that the exercise would add 2 per cent more voters to the present list of voters having 5.49 crore voters.

The CEO clarified that MROs would act as assistant election officers at ground level for inclusions of deletions and the public— be it political party, association or gram panchayat itself, could approach the district Collector who would be appellate authority, if there was any grievance.

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