The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Distribution of voter ID cards at snail’s pace in Guntur

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Wednesday, Mar 04, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Distribution of voter ID cards at snail’s pace in Guntur

P. Samuel Jonathan

Candidates worried over likely low percentage of voting
First lot of electronic voting machines put on FLT scrutiny

Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

ECIL personnel inspecting the electronic voting machines at Revenue Kalyana Mandapam in Guntur on Tuesday. —

GUNTUR: With just 78 per cent of residual voters covered by the Electronic Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) in the crucial Guntur-West constituency and 81 per cent in the Guntur-East, prospective candidates are raising concern over likely low percentage of voting due to non-availability of the cards.

A day after the Election Commission released the election schedule; the district administration had ascertained that 91 per cent of voters had been covered by the EPIC. Sources said they were awaiting orders from the State Election Commission. The issue also figured in the video conference held on Tuesday with the Election Commission attended by the District Collector and all the Electoral Returning Officers.

The final tally of voters indicated that there were 32,42,455 voters in the district, out of which females accounted for 16.53 lakh while the strength of male voters was 15.88 lakh.

Of the 32.42 lakh voters, the number of voters having photo identity cards was 29.85 lakh.

Tadikonda (SC) constituency gets the distinction for having covered 98.55 per cent of voters with photo identity cards, followed by Vemuru (SC) with 96.54 per cent and Narsaraopet (94.37 per cent).

District Collector Jayesh Ranjan, Joint Collector Kantilal Dande, Municipal Commissioner Siddharth Jain and Guntur Revenue Divisional Officer S. Venkat Rao, also the returning officers of their respective constituencies plunged into the poll-preparedness and issued detailed directions on the model code of conduct.

The Commissioner has already directed the staff to deploy flying squad members, who would randomly check against any poll violations, record them and send it to the State Election Commission for further action. The toll-free ‘103’ service numbers has already been activated and people could register their complaints, the Commissioner said.

Meanwhile, the first lot of 8,861 Electronic Voting Machines were put to a First Level Testing (FLT) scrutiny by a team of technical engineers from ECIL, Hyderabad. The EVMs kept at the Revenue Kalyana Mandapam were screened amid tight security.

Officials said the entire past data stored in the EVMs was being erased and a full functional test was being carried, before the EVMs were shifted to the respective constituencies.

The EVMs would then be placed under the custody of EROs and would be opened only after the parties declare their list of final contestants.

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