The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Draft electoral rolls released

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 02, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Draft electoral rolls released

Staff Reporter

Copies sent to all political parties

IS YOUR NAME THERE?: Corporation officials display the draft electoral rolls to residents of Zone III (Pulianthope) in Chennai on Monday. — Photo: R. Ragu

CHENNAI: City election officials on Monday released draft electoral rolls for 14 Assembly constituencies in the city. They will be on display at polling stations, post offices and zonal offices.

Residents can submit claims or objections before August 16. Another round of verification would be taken up till the end of the month. The final roll would be published on September 15.

Election officials despatched copies of the rolls to offices of all national and regional political parties recognised by the Election Commission.

To mark the release, Corporation Commissioner M.P. Vijayakumar, also the District Election Officer, handed over copies of the rolls for Royapuram (constituency No.1) to representatives of various political parties. No one turned up at the Ripon Buildings to collect copies on behalf of the AIADMK.

The party representatives demanded that the Commissioner accept bulk applications for deletions. "The public does not bother to inform the election officials about deaths or migrations. These surface only when we [political parties] take door-to-door verification. So you must accept bulk applications from us," they said.

Mr. Vijayakumar said he would convey the representations to the Election Commission. However, only individual applications would be entertained now.

Intensive revision

The house-to-house enumeration was taken up by the civic body between March 1 and April 24 as part of the intensive revision of rolls in 39 Assembly constituencies. The Election Commission undertook the revision after many voters could not vote in the May 2004 Lok Sabha elections as their names were missing from the electoral rolls.

In Chennai, special teams, consisting of National Service Society volunteers and Corporation staff, included the names of those above the age of 18 as on January 1, 2005.

The manuscript was compared with the 2004 electoral rolls only after the initial exercise, Mr. Vijayakumar said. "We entered the data in computers and later took printouts to cross-check whether there were any corrections." More than two lakh additions had been made to the new list.

To simplify the rolls, officials have created sub-sections for apartments blocks and buildings with more than one family.

More than 10,000 persons worked to prepare the rolls. "We feel like students who worked a whole year for the exam. We have written it now and it is up to the people to judge us," Mr. Vijayakumar said.

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