Pune District Election Office (DEO) seeks help from housing societies. (Source: File Photo)
For the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, the District Election Office (DEO) has urged the cooperative housing societies to help the election department revise the electoral roll by submitting information on the eligible voters residing in their societies. A meeting of all cooperative housing society office bearers was recently called by the DEO.
District Collector Naval Kishore Ram said that it was for the first time that the DEO was involving the office bearers of cooperative housing societies in the election process.
“The cooperative housing societies are the best bodies to have knowledge of the residents living in the society. They can contribute effectively in the revision of the electoral list,” he said.
He urged the office bearers to provide the information of the voters residing in the society, which would be taken into consideration while finalising the electoral roll.
“The cooperative housing societies will have to submit the information on the voters residing in the society to the returning officer of the respective assembly segment,” he said.
It will be the responsibility of the concerned assistant returning officer to take action, based on the submission by housing societies. I will keep track of it and ensure that the efforts of cooperative housing societies don’t go waste,” Ram said. The District Collector said that there are cases where the women of some families are not enrolled in the electoral roll.
“We have decided to give priority to enrollment of all eligible women along with the youth in the voters’ list,” he said.
As per the growth of the Pune district, Ram said, he expects that there should be enrollment of at least two lakh new voters every year in the district but it has not been the case so the drive in colleges has been taken up. The election staff also has to be careful on voters enrollment to ensure that there is no duplication of voters in the electoral roll as it is either done with political motive or happens due to mistake of administration, he said.
District Deputy Registrar B T Lavand said there are a total of 16,360 cooperative housing societies in the limits of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC).
“These housing societies are registered at various sub-offices in the district. I have directed all the sub-office to hold meetings with the election staff of the respective areas to spread the message to all the housing societies on participation in election process,” he said.
District Deputy Election Officer Monika Singh Thakur said that the special election drive is being conducted on every Sunday of October month with the Booth Level Officer (BLO) stationed in the respective polling booths for the convenience of citizens to enrol, delete or make corrections in the electoral roll.
“The housing societies should urge the voters to take advantage of the special drive as there are only two Sunday left to avail service at the polling booth. Thereafter, the voters will have to visit the election offices for the purpose,” she said.