Poll reforms Bill will make electoral rolls clean: CEC Sushil Chandra

The Bill, he said, enables “linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem”.

Addressing the media in Panaji, Chandra said: “This is a very useful Bill…the reason for this particular linkage (with Aadhaar) is that in our electoral rolls…(many) persons (are listed) in two or three places. So that will help us in eliminating double voters – double names of same persons in one constituency…so the electoral roll will be very, very clean.”

Asserting that no name will be deleted “without full verification”, he said, “You will be given choices. Suppose you are a voter at two places and we come to know that, the natural process is I should ask you whether you would like to be a voter in Panaji or at the other place. So, safeguards are there. This will ensure a very clean vote.”

The Bill was passed by Rajya Sabha on Tuesday amid a walkout by the Opposition.

Chandra also said that in the upcoming elections, political parties will have to state reasons for fielding a candidate with criminal antecedents, “so that the public is well-informed about antecedents of candidates”. The record of a candidate’s criminal antecedents will have to be published in newspapers and TV at least thrice, and parties will have to publish them on their websites as well, he said.

“They will have to give reasons for choosing a person with criminal antecedents, and why they could not find a clean candidate and what was so specific about this person that they have chosen so that there is full knowledge about the candidate. Ultimately, it is the elector who will choose.”
The ECI officials were on a two-day visit to poll-bound Goa to review poll preparedness in the state.

For the first time, he said, there will be webcasting data analytics in Goa, for which IIT-Goa has also lent its expertise. “There will be real-time monitoring of polling stations that will ensure booths will be absolutely impartial, queue management can be done through it, and if there are unwanted people in the polling booth they can be removed,” said Chandra.