As many as 42 private internet browsing centres across Cuddalore district have been designated as “Voters’ registration centres” for carrying out deletion, addition and correction in the electoral rolls through online, according to Collector R. Kirlosh Kumar.
After inaugurating these centres on Saturday, he told reporters that such a measure had been taken on the direction of the Election Commission and Chief Electoral Officer, Chennai. The centres identified for the purpose would sport flex banners carrying the Election Commission’ symbol.
The Collector said that online registration process had been introduced as handing over of hardcopies of applications to the office concerned was fraught with difficulties.
Experience had shown that voters would have to take effort to go over to the office to hand over forms for addition/deletion or correction in the voters’ lists. More often these forms were either not properly filled or wrong entries were made.
Hence, mistakes crept in the preparation of electoral rolls. Such shortcomings could be avoided by resorting to online registration. However, till now only those having personal computers could make use of such facility.
Having realised the problems of the electorate on this score, the Election Commission had decided to rope in the services of certain private internet browsing centres to carry out the task for a fee.
The following fee structure has been fixed:
For addition/deletion or correction – Rs. 10 each; for change of address within the same constituency – Rs. 10 , to send complaints online – Rs. 10, to ascertain the location of polling station or status of complaints – Rs. 3, and to take copy of each of these activities – Rs. 2 per copy.
Mr. Kumar further said that proprietors or representative of these select browsing centres had been given training through PowerPoint presentation. They were also given a handbook detailing their responsibility and the fee to be collected for every task.
