Regular revision of electoral roll in India?
Answers
Answer:
The updating of Electoral Roll is a continuous process except for the period prescribed by Election Commission of India during the process of Election to Assembly/Parliamentary Constituency or during the period of Special Summary/Intensive Revision of Electoral Roll.
Answer:The electoral roll of a constituency is a list of all those people in that constituency who are registered to vote in the elections. Only those people whose names are there in the electoral rolls are allowed to vote as ‘electors’. The electoral roll is normally revised every year to add the names of those who are not less than 18 on a qualifying date years as on the first day of January of that year, or have moved into the constituency, and to remove the names of those who have died or moved out of the constituency. The updating of electoral rolls is a continuous process, which is interrupted only at the time of the elections during the period from after the last date of filing nominations till the completion of the elections. The administrative machinery involved in the preparation, maintenance and revision of the electoral rolls has the ECI at the top of the hierarchy. According to Section 13B of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the electoral roll for each constituency in a State/UT is to be prepared and revised by an Electoral Registration Officer (ERO). At the bottom of the hierarchy, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and supervisors are also appointed. Each BLO has one or two polling stations under his/her jurisdiction. During the revision of the electoral rolls, BLOs may be assigned the tasks of enumeration, the verification of rolls and forms, and the collection of forms and photographs from the electors for Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) and photo roll maximisation. BLOs hand over the forms thus collected to the designated officers and EROs for further action. During the time when continuous revision and updating is going on, BLOs may be used for the identification of dead and shifted voters on specified dates prescribed for the purpose by the ECI (one week in each half of a year). In an election year, a BLO’s task begins with the publication of the draft rolls till the completion of the second Supplement according to a specific programme approved by the ECI. Supervisory officers maintain checks on the quality of work done by the BLOs, and closely monitor it. Each Supervisory Officer has 10-20 BLOs under his/her supervision. Apart from the machinery involved in the process of the preparation and revision of the electoral rolls, community participation has also been identified as one of the ways in which political parties can appoint their representatives as Booth Level Agents (BLAs) on the pattern of appointment of Polling Agents, to complement the task of BLOs. Normally, one BLA may be appointed for each part of the electoral roll. The BLA must be a registered elector in the relevant part of the electoral roll for which he/she is appointed, as it is expected that the BLA will scrutinise the entries in the draft roll of the area where he/she resides, in order to identify the entries of dead persons and shifted persons.