The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Janaagraha launches CIVIL

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 01, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Janaagraha launches CIVIL

Special Correspondent

Bangalore: Even a 50 per cent voter turnout during an election is considered good these days and anything above the 60 per cent mark makes headlines. Almost ignored is the fact that half or more of registered voters have not exercised their franchise for various reasons.

Against this background, Janaagraha, the citizens' initiative for participation in civic governance took up a programme, Citizens' Initiative on Voter Identification List (CIVIL).

While the Election Commission has the responsibility of ensuring accurate voters' lists, citizens have a responsibility too. In the villages, voters' lists are read out and identified at gram sabhas. In cities, there has not been any such platform for voter identification and the margin for error is estimated to be a significant 40 to 50 per cent in cities.

CIVIL is an ambitious programme formed in partnership with Vote India, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) and Election Commission.

The then Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy launched the initiative a year ago with local residents taking steps to verify the list for a sample Assembly Constituency, Rajajinagar.

The analysis of the survey conducted in 3500 households with 18,688 voters revealed facts for serious concern. Error rates of 65 per cent were found in the voters lists. There were two types of errors: names that had to be deleted and named that need to be added.

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