“The Election Commission will give top priority for holding elections in a fair and peaceful way,” reiterated Anil Kumar Jha, State Chief Electoral Officer.

He was speaking at an interaction programme on ‘Voting awareness and electoral reforms’ organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mysore Chapter, at a private hotel in city yesterday.

Jha pointed out that out of 4.36 crore voters in the State, about one crore failed to vote during the last Assembly polls when the government had spent about Rs. 150 crore for conducting the polls. He opined that exercising one’s franchise was a matter of pride and appealed the citizen forums to educate people on compulsory voting.

Continuing, Jha said that close monitoring on movements of candidates was done during the Assembly polls by deputing special officers and micro-observers at every constituency. He added that the Election Commission had taken all steps to help people to register their names in voters’ list and a toll free number 1950 has been opened to address people’s grievances.

When a participant alleged that the Election Commission website was not functional for online registrations in voters’ list, Jha assured that the problem owing to certain technical faults would be solved soon. He welcomed suggestions to introduce mobile registration centres.

Referring to a plea by Mysore Industries Association Secretary Suresh Kumar Jain to withdraw compulsory paid holidays for voting and declare it as a compensatory holiday, Jha assured to refer the matter to the Election Commission.

State Election Commission Joint Electoral Officer S. Ziyaullah, CII Mysore Chairman S. Nagaraj, Vice-Chairman R.C. Jagadish and others were present.

Deletion of names

At a review meeting on registration of names in voters’ list, Jha directed the participating officials not to delete names from the voters’ list other than those who have made a request through Form 7 during revision of voters’ list. He instructed the officials not to assign any other work for the data entry operators recruited exclusively for revision of voters list as the work has to be completed within the assigned time. Jha said that the last date for enrolling and raising objections is Nov. 29 so as to facilitate announcement of electoral list on Jan. 6 next. He directed officials to hold awareness programmes in educational institutions to enrol more youth.

Deputy Commissioner C. Shikha and senior officials attended the meeting.

Courtesy : Star Of Mysore