Electoral rolls to include pictures

New Delhi: The Election Commission is to introduce new electoral rolls with photographs of voters that can be matched with identity cards to increase fairness of the polls.

According to Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswamy, the poll panel will introduce the new rolls at the next general elections in 2009.

"The rolls will have the photograph of the voter beside his or her name for proper identification," Gopalaswamy said while delivering a lecture at the Foreign Service Institute in the capital. But he added this would be "a time consuming process".

He also said Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) over 15 years old would be replaced by new machines with more features.

"The new machines will have mechanisms to keep records for five years. These records can be used if there is a court case challenging the results," Gopalaswamy told young diplomats from various countries.

"It will also have an interface to connect [various electronic voting] machines so that results can be announced even faster." Data from the rolls will be made accessible to the public to ensure accuracy. But he admitted the poll panel's efforts to make the electoral rolls 100 per cent error free had not been successful.

Problems

"It has never been satisfactory. Around 1-1.5 per cent of voters go out of the rolls every year and there are 2 per cent fresh additions. The huge inter-state movements also result in at least 8 per cent changes in the lists. We have not been able to find an answer to these problems.

"It is impossible to compare the names of 680 million voters through a data base," he added. There are instances when we found a man in Madhya Pradesh had 147 election identity cards."

Gopalaswamy said the Election Commission had tried to maintain accuracy through checking the male-female ratio against the census data of the area, vulnerable mapping and assessment of votes.

"Over the years, the Election Commission has moved from macro management of election to micro management," he said.

"It has introduced a system in which voters' names in the electoral rolls would be read out in the panchayats in rural areas. In urban areas this task is to be given to resident welfare associations," he added.

No outsourcing for fear of tampering

The Election Commission will not outsource the preparation of electoral rolls because they can be tampered with, Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswamy said yesterday.

He said there would be "half a chance" of "interested parties" tampering with the rolls if the work was outsourced.

Gopalaswamy said more accuracy in the electoral process could be maintained if each voter had a unique number and card. "But that is possible only after the home ministry introduces the national identity card," he added.