The Greater Chennai Corporation will start distributing Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) to new voters in the city from October first week.
The civic body had 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 arrangements were made to distribute 27,000 new voter ID cards. All the booth-level officers (BLOs), including those put on COVID-19 duty, had been reassigned to complete the summary revision of the electoral rolls for 2020-21.
The civic body, as part of the electoral updating exercise, created a progress tracker for the work done by the staff with senior officials getting computer-generated reports.
He said the work of inclusion of names, correction and removal of names is being coordinated and checked by the electoral registration officers (EROs) and assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs).
Regarding complaints of voters for inclusion or carrying out corrections of any mistakes to be carried out in voters’ list, the civic official said the public could easily update the details by accessing the portal www.nsvp.in without the need to visit the corporation offices.
Although the summary revision of electoral rolls is a continuous process, a few residents had complaints of voter identification cards having errors and wrong photographs.
Complaints galore
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 instead of his photo though he had not made any complaint. He rued several mistakes 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 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 work. Only the Election Commission had the power to carry out delimitation of revenue districts, he said.
The proposal to link Aadhaar with EPIC was under serious consideration but a decision had not been taken by the EC till now, he added.
