NEW DELHI, Mar 22: The Election Commission of India on Saturday said over 4,000 of its electoral registration officers are holding all-party meetings to resolve pending polling booth level issues in their respective Assembly seats.
The meetings are in line with the poll body’s recent decision to hold interactions with parties at multiple levels in the state to resolve complaints. Several political parties have accused the ECI of fudging electoral data to benefit the BJP.
Parties including the Trinamool Congress had flagged voter cards with duplicate numbers. The ECI now has decided to explore possibility of linking voter cards with Aadhaar and involve birth and death registration authorities to clean up voter rolls.
Besides the over 4000 electoral registration officers, all 788 district election officers and 36 state chief electoral officers have also been directed to hold such meetings to resolve any pending issues at the district and state level within the legal framework. These meetings are to be completed by March 31.
The meetings were in keeping with the undertakings the ECI had given to the Supreme Court on March 18. The apex court had asked the ECI to meet the petitioners, Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra and representatives of NGO Association for Democratic Reform, and hear their demand to upload on its official website authenticated, scanned and legible account of votes recorded booth wise after each phase of polling. The ECI, represented by senior advocate Maninder Singh, had agreed to grant the petitioners a hearing in a bid to resolve the issues.
(Manas Dasgupta)
