AR Bhat
The election commission on first of January launch a revision to strike off names of deceased people, also dead service personnel of the military from the service electors in the electoral rolls, the poll panel has decided to carry out revision on the rolls of service electors after 12 years for updating of the electoral data, the election commission announced this revision of retired, deceased, or have ceased to service voter for other reasons. The last part of the rolls of any constituency contains names of the electors on service in military forces such as personnel working in Army, Navy, Air force, CRPF, Assam rifles, BSF, ITBP, BRO, and also members of armed police force serving outside their state and employed by government of India. The wife of the service elector if she is staying with the serving personnel is also eligible to be registered in the last part of electoral roll of any constituency as a service elector. The election commission said the nationwide electoral revision would be completed by April 1, the commission also requested, home ministry and ministry of defence for cooperation and assist in carrying out the revision.
The election commission has initiated the revision of jammu and kashmir electoral after the delimitation exercise and electoral will be prepared by August end, the chief election commissioner and election commissioner after carrying out a detailed review and directed jammu and kashmir chief electoral officer to map the redrawn constitution of assembly. This revision of electoral roll has to be carried out and finished before the first assembly election in jammu and kashmir. This is a intensive and time bound activity and pre revision activities are required for the revision of the assembly constituencies. Directions were also passed for the appointment of officials for the work of updating voters list. Mapping, renaming and re organising of the polling stations after delimitation will be at earliest completed by june 30, in addition to the identification of polling station in few villages where new booths need to be created.
After delimitation, few of the earlier polling station may come under more than one new constituency or fully shifted to some other constituency, hence mapping and re organising is very important and a tedious task to be accomplished before june 30 according to the statement given by the election commission. As per election commission various tasks have to be carried out simultaneously, The polling stations will be mapped and appointment and training of booth officers will be completed by july 5. Verification and identification of polling booths will be completed by july 25. And at the end the draft of electoral roll to be prepared by August 31. During this revision of electoral roll and during mapping of polling station citizens will be given an opportunity to enrol as a new voter or change their particulars in roll and also particular of any deceased person can be taken out by the family members with valid proof of death.
The role para military forces in support to central government for conduct of elections in peaceful way is always commendable, the para military forces ensured a peaceful election in our country, if something goes wrong they are prepared to contain the situation before it becomes very big, However the role preparing and revising electoral roll is completely the work of election commission of India and any support give by armed forces on ground is very less. However in revising of service electoral roll the election commission has requested for support from ministry of defense and home ministry, and full support has been given to the election commission to revise the service electoral roll of all the constituency, this revising of service electoral roll is being done after 12 years.
Other than providing protection and security at the time of election to the citizens the armed forces has much less to offer for election commission of India, With huge reforms made by election commission such as revision of electoral roll, gender neutral voter rules, voter registration multiple times in a year to encourage people to vote the election commission is doing a direct approach to citizens in all their reforms.
