The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Political parties permitted to enrol voters again

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 15, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Political parties permitted to enrol voters again

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, SEPT. 14. Political parties have once again been allowed to undertake the mass enrolment of voters in the State as part of the summary revision of electoral rolls in the State now under way. The Chief Electoral Officer, M. Narayana Rao, gave a green signal to this effect after meeting representatives of parties today, ahead of publication of the draft rolls tomorrow.

He said at a press meet later that as a safeguard against possible irregularities in enrolment by political parties, the lists proposed by them would have to necessarily be signed by a district-level office-bearer. The office-bearer would be held responsible for any false statement leading to creation of "bogus voters," he said. On the eve of the Assembly elections, about 93 lakh such bogus voters were removed from the lists.

Enrolment procedure

Applications for mass enrolment could be submitted by residential welfare/housing societies and gram panchayats. The voters' list of a locality would be read out at gram/ward sabhas with reference to claims/objections. Mr Rao said the summary revision would be application-based in that those who apply would alone get the voting right.

The designated locations for receiving claims/objections would be the RDO and MRO offices and the 56,000 polling stations. The existing electoral rolls and the prescribed forms for filing claims/objections would be kept at post-offices.

The forms could also be downloaded from two Websites belonging to the Election Commission and the State Government--www.eci.gov.in and www.aponline. gov.in.

Schedule announced

The schedule of the programme is as follows: draft publication of the existing rolls September 15; filing claims/objections September 15 to October 15; and special campaign at polling stations September 25 and 26 and Oct 9 and 10.

Mr Rao said all claims/objections would be disposed of by December 1 and printing of the supplementary inclusions and deletions would be completed by December 31. Final publication of the rolls would be on January 3.

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Andhra Pradesh