Electoral purification programme will take time in NE

From Staff Correspondent
Shillong, April 29: The tiol electoral purification and authentication programme carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) will stretch in the North eastern states due to certain challenges, even as the time frame for the completion in the whole country is fixed for August 15 this year. This was made known by the two Deputy Commissioners of the Election Commission of India S. Tripathi and Umesh Sinha after a meeting with the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of the eight sister states at Shillong on Wednesday.
One main is the incomplete Aadhar registration in the North eastern states that depends on the tiol Population Register (NPR). The updation of the tiol Register of Citizens and other issues related to logistics in the far flung areas are some other hiccups, stated the two ECI officials during an interaction with newsmen.
Stating that most of the North eastern states have asked for more time to complete the process that aims to incrementally improve the electoral rolls in the Northeastern region including Meghalaya, Tripathi said, “the states have asked for more time and we have asked them to put a plan in place to execute the exercise in the tentative deadline that they wish to complete”.
On the doubtful voters, Tripathi said that there status will remain the same till they are authenticated adding that the programme to purify and correct the mistakes of the electoral rolls has nothing to do with the doubtful voters.
Pressed with the questions on the incomplete Aadhar, NPC and NRC, Umesh Sinha said, “Our duty is provide better services to the electorates, to authenticate the voters through the corrections that have to be made”.
He spoke on a number of initiatives that the ECI has undertaken right from the Aadhar card, the mobile phone numbers, the email IDs that can make the authentication process more meaningful. However, these authentication will have to go through the EROs of every district and block developmental officers.