Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Electoral Officer, Sushil Kumar Lohani took a review of all Collectors and Sub-Collectors regarding their preparedness to conduct a special campaign for Electoral Roll Revision which is going to start from November 9, 2022 by Election Commission of India.
Explaining the officers about the Special Summary Revision of Electoral Roll, Lohani informed that Commission has made provision for collection of Advance Application from prospective Electors (17+ years) now. Earlier there was only one qualifying date i.e. 1st January of every year for which 18+ years youth had to wait for one year for enrolling themselves in the electoral roll. But from this year provision has been made for four qualifying dates starting with each quarter of the year i.e. 1st January, 1st April, 1st July and 1st October.
The Chief Electoral Officer further informed that during this campaign period all the applicants who are going to qualify till 1st October, 2023 can apply in advance.
Odisha has made good progress in online enrolment of electors by use of “Voter Helpline App” by the citizen independently and by GARUDA App by the Booth Level Officers. Citizen can use Voter Helpline App or visit nvsp.in for making online application.
He further informed that citizen can apply for addition, correction or deletion etc. in the respective forms like Form-6 for addition, From-7 for deletion or objection to any entry. Form-8 is being used for shifting cases, correction of entries including photographs. Now, alongwith other documents, Aadhaar card can be used for both proof of identity and residence. The applicants may scan and upload the Aadhaar as proof of identity and residence.
The commission is also encouraging voluntary linking of Aadhaar number with the EPIC (Voter Card Number) which will facilitate filtering the duplicates and make the voter list error free. Odisha is among the top states in the country in achieving this goal of linking EPIC with Aadhaar more than 77% of the voters in the state have already linked their Aadhaar in the ongoing programme. The rest can do this during this revision period.
During the Revision Period, Special Campaign will be done on four days i.e. 12th-13th November and 26th-27th November, 2022 when BLOs will be available in the respective polling stations to facilitate the voters.
Senior officers have been appointed as Roll Observers who will also visit the assigned districts during the revision exercise to oversee the revision process.
The Chief Electoral Officer appreciated the effort of field officials for taking up interest in popularising the online apps for which the state has been performing well and advised them to reach out to the prospective voters and facilitate enrolling of their names in the electoral roll during the revision period.
Lohani further informed that the best performing Booth Level Officers, Sub-Collectors, other electoral officers and even the District Collector will be awarded during the next National Voters Day function to be held on 25th January, 2023.
Ms Kalinga