The Election Commission’s new mega Electors Verification Programme (EVP), which seeks to update electoral rolls through crowd sourcing, is set be to launched on September 1 across the country, officials said on Saturday.
Under the programme, a voter from each family will get a username and password, allowing a person to upload all documents related to electoral registration and tag similar details about his or her family members, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ranbir Singh said at a press conference in New Delhi.
“These details will then be verified by block level officers (BLOs) and therefore, it will save a lot of time. The idea is also to empower voters to assess electoral roll details, self-authenticate and then get mistakes rectified, if any,” he said.
The ‘mega million’ launch will take place in all States and Union territories. It will be done by 36 CEOs at the state headquarters level, by 740 district electoral officers at the district level and by BLOs and electoral registration officers in around one million polling stations, the EC said.
“In Delhi, the EVP will be launched from 14,000 different places. The programme will take place in campaign mode from September 1 to October 15.
“The purpose is to improve the health of electoral rolls and augment enrolment of all eligible citizens during special summary revision of the electoral rolls,” Mr. Singh told reporters.
He said, the summary revision draft will be published after that, with cut-off date being January 1, 2020, and the final roll will be published by the first or second week of January.
The Delhi CEO said, the EVP programme can be effected both online and offline.
“Online, a voter can go to the NVSP website and do the desired registration or on Voter helpline mobile app of the EC. Offline, voters can go to any of the voters’ centre spread across 70 assembly constituencies or through nearly 550 CSCs (Common Service Centres) spread across the city, if a person is not so tech-savvy” Singh said.
Each CSC will charge a nominal fee, like ₹1 for uploading a document or ₹2 for photo upload and ₹1 for submitting Form 6. The fee will be displayed at each CSC and also on the Delhi CEO website, he said.
The EC in a statement said the EVP is “meant for improvement of health of electoral rolls and enrolment of all eligible citizens during special summary revision 2020 by verification or authentication of electors’ details through crowd sourcing and verification through field inputs by BLOs which is scheduled to be launched in all States/UTs on September 1“.
The commission has decided that in addition to the already approved seven documents — passport, driving license, Aadhaar, ration card, identity card for government/semi-government officials, bank passbooks, and farmer’s identity card; three more documents will also be used for authentication of electors’ details.
“These documents are — PAN card, smart card issued by RGI under NPR; and latest water/telephone/electricity/ gas connection bill for that address, either in the name of the applicant or that of his/her immediate relation like parents etc,” the EC said.
The citizens will also be allowed to submit verified documents from Digilocker for which provision has been made on prescribed digital platforms, the statement said.
Mr. Singh said, this was a “golden opportunity” for voters to get the names added, details modified or names removed in case of death of voters.
Sharing the details on electoral rolls of Delhi, he said, till August 31, the number of voters on the roll stood at nearly 1.44 cr.
Out of this 1,43,94,262 voters, 79,12, 319 are male, 64,81,261 female and 682 of third gender, he said.
In Rajasthan, CEO Anand Kumar said the verification programme will run from September 1 to October 15.
Kumar has appealed to voters to verify their entries through the facilities provided by the EC such as the NVSP portal and the Voter helpline mobile app.