Chennai Corporation would start distributing Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) to new voters in the city from October first week.
The civic body has completed the three revision activities of rationalisation of polling stations, removing duplicate entries and carrying out corrections in the electoral rolls and would start distributing the voter ID cards, said officials.
A senior official of the Corporation said all arrangements are being made to distribute 27,000 new voter cards. All the Booth Level Officers (BLOs), including a section of BLOs who were involved in COVID-19 have been reassigned for completing the summary revision of the electoral rolls for 2020-21.
The civic body, as part of the electoral updating exercise, has created a progress tracker for the various works being performed by the various election staff with senior officials getting information of the summary revision through computer generated reports.
He further said that the electoral updation works of inclusion, correction and removal of the voters by the BLOs are being coordinated and checked by the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs).
Regarding the queries and complaints of voters for inclusion or carrying out corrections of any mistakes to be carried out in the voters list, the civic official said the public could easily update the details by accessing the portal www.nsvp.in at all times, that too during the COVID-19 pandemic without the need to visit the corporation offices.
Though the summary revision of electoral rolls is a continuous process of updation a few residents have grievances of their voter identification cards being error-prone with mismatched photos and typing errors of personal details including names and addresses repeatedly.
V. Rama Rao, social activist of Nanganallur - one of the added areas to the corporation, complained that in the new EPIC issued recently some other person's photo was affixed replacing his original photo though he had not made any complaint. He also rued about several mistakes noticed in the voter identification cards in the locality and charged that the revenue officials of Kancheepuram district were not taking any steps to rectify them.
Regarding the complaint raised by the residents in the newly added areas, the senior civic official said the city should be having 22 revenue districts after expansion by including portions from the neighbouring three districts but was demarcated with 16 revenue districts for electoral works. The delimitation of revenue districts should be carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) only, he said.
The linking of Aadhaar card with EPIC was also being seriously considered but no decision has been taken by the ECI till now, he added.
