EC promises error-free rolls in Tripura

The Election Commission will try its best to prepare error-free photo electoral rolls for 60 Assembly segments to ensure free and fair election in left ruled Tripura slated for early next year.

“We receive complaints from political parties on the rolls. All complaints will be checked properly to prepare the rolls error free”, said Tapas Kumar, Secretary to the EC.

Mr. Kumar who is heading a four member team of the Election Commission said that a high level meeting was held with representatives of political parties to know their grievances.

“They have given us a bunch of complaints related to rolls”, he said.

Complaints include inclusion of voters on the basis of false certificates, duplicate voters and voting rights of state’s security forces thorough postal ballots, he said adding that the purpose of visit was to verify photo electoral rolls.

After attending the meeting, CPI (M) spokesman Gautam Das said that he brought some complaints to the notice of EC officials.

“It has been noticed that a number of voters were included in the rolls on the basis of false certificate. Besides the voting rights of security personnel, people engaged in transport sector and cluster villages should also be ensured”, he said.

The EC officials assured that they would look into the matters and take necessary steps, he said.

Congress legislator Sudip Roy Barman who led the party in the meeting said that the party wanted to publish the names of fresh voters and rejected application before the final publication of rolls. “The demand is aimed to help the Commission in identifying genuine and duplicate voters”, he said.

INPT leaders Nagendra Jamatia said that he made the EC aware about the errors in the rolls. “The voting rights of state’s security forces should be ensured at any cost”, he said.

A three-member delegation of Election Commission visited Tripura to investigate an alleged tampering of electoral roll.

Chief Electoral Officer GSG Ayyangar said that the EC has taken steps to ensure an error-free electoral roll for which several phases of revision has been carried out across the State.

So far more than 6,500 fake voters, mostly women, have been identified in the draft photo electoral rolls.

Dr Ayyangar also said that after deleting the names of fake voters, the total strength of the electorate remained at 19, 96,196.

‘’A list of all the fake has been sent to District Magistrates for further verification before being deleted’’, Dr Ayyangar said.

Earlier, the names of 80,000 such voters have already been striked out from the electoral rolls.

The Chief Election Commissioner of India N Gopalaswami along with two officials from Commission are likely to visit in December end or early in January 2008 to take stock of the preparation in this poll bound State, Ayyangar said.

Meanwhile, the Opposition leader of the state, Congress leader Ratan Lal Nath met Chief Election Commission of India N Gopalaswami.

He demanded to invoke the Model Code of Conduct in the State immediately.

He also demanded to include names of security personnel according to their home ground instead of their place of posting.

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