More than 3 lakh voters in Jalandhar district have not yet been mapped under Election Commission's new digital voter system and according to officials these voters may face problems in future electoral rolls if they do not participate in upcoming Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.
Election Commission conducted special camps on Sunday at all 1,926 polling booths across district as part of pre SIR campaign and purpose of the campaign was to update and verify voter records under new digital system.
Official data shows that Jalandhar district currently has 16,50,095 registered voters and out of these 13,47,713 voters or 81.67 percent have already been successfully mapped however the mapping process is still pending for 3,02,382 voters.
Officials said the pending cases are mainly linked to old voter records from 2003 that could not be located in system and because of missing records these voters have not yet been fully mapped under new digital process. During the campaign Joint Chief Electoral Officer Navneet Kaur Ball carried out surprise inspections at several polling booths in Jalandhar West, Jalandhar Central and Jalandhar Cantt.
SDM-1 Shubhi Angra, Milk Officer Navdeep Singh and Election Tehsildar Sukhdev Singh were also present during inspections.
According to Election Commission and district administration voters whose records are currently unmapped should take part in upcoming revision process and from June 25 to July 24 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will visit homes across district and during these visits voters will be required to fill out an enumeration form.
Officials have stated that filling out the form is mandatory for every voter and if a voter does not complete enumeration form during this period their name will not be included in draft voter list prepared by Election Commission.
Election Commission has announced a schedule for revision process:
June 25 to July 24: BLOs will conduct door-to-door visits and collect enumeration forms from voters.
August 3: Draft voter list prepared after mapping and verification process will be published.
August 3 to September 2: Voters will be able to file claims and objections if their names are missing from draft list or if there are any errors in their details and during this period eligible voters can request corrections or seek inclusion of their names.
October 1: Final voter list will be published after all claims, objections and corrections have been processed.
During special camps and verification process officials also found cases involving duplicate voter cards and according to the information shared by authorities investigations in areas including Gadaipur, Sanjay Gandhi Colony, Industrial Area, Leather Complex, Avtar Nagar, Basti Danishmanda, Basti Bawa Khel, Transport Nagar and Ghazi Gulla revealed that several migrants who have been living permanently in Punjab for years were still holding voter cards issued in their home states.
Officials said many of these individuals also possess voter cards issued in Punjab and as a result they are holding more than one voter card.
Authorities stated that voters are not permitted to have voter registration in more than one state an the verification process found that some individuals had not surrendered voter cards issued by their previous states after obtaining voter registration in Punjab and officials have indicated that action will be taken in such cases and names linked to duplicate voter registrations may be deleted as per election rules.
The Election Commission has advised all voters to cooperate with BLOs during upcoming house to house verification process and ensure that their voter information is updated correctly in electoral records.
