In the recent Telangana elections, there were allegations of large scale missing of names from the voters’ lists. Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar had to tender apology for the failures. Lok Satta leader Jayaprakash Narayan had taken strong objection to this, saying there should be a solution to this problem and reforms should have to be brought in voter enrollment.
Jayaprakash suggested that the Election Commission of India take up all-year-round voter enrollment by making the respective postal offices as nodal agencies for the same. This way, there will be no need for any tampering, confusion or mismanagement of the voter lists and the data concerned. As of now, the revenue and other departments are involved in the process of electoral lists preparation which is giving scope for political influences.
The comments of Jayaprakash get wide significance in view of the difficulties involved in getting voter card though this system has been brought online. The respective chief electoral officers’ websites have created channels for giving new voter cards and also making changes in old ones. Jayaprakash insisted on continuous process of voter enrollment as the present system of conducting special drives for this is not reaching all sections of society.
