Fresh application to enlist names in voters' list

MALDA, March. 8. — The Malda district magistrate, Mr Abhijit Choudhuri, today said that genuine voters whose names have been deleted due to some “unavoidable reasons” from the electoral rolls would have to submit applications to get their names enlisted in the rolls. The election officials have also regretted the fact that the names of genuine voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls, on the ground that they were dead. The EC officials have requested the concerned offices to include the names of such voters as soon as possible. This process would continue till the last date of filing of nomination papers by the candidates, officials said today. At present, the English Bazaar block office alone has received at least 10 such applications. On the other hand, the district election officials have identified nine clubs in the district from where the polling stations would be shifted. Following an instruction by the EC observer, the Malda district election officials have installed a software as search engine for detection of dead voters in all blocks following the system of English Bazaar block, located at the district headquarters. At present, more than 100 such dead and shifted voters have been identified by the search engine. In order to make a perfect supplementary electoral roll, the dead voters’ lists have been sent to the district controller of food and supplies from block office via the district magistrate and on the other hand the DCFS has sent their dead list based on ration cards to delete those names from the electoral rolls. In the meantime, to provide electoral photo identity cards to all voters before election, all gram panchayats have been provided with a camera each for taking snap of voters. The municipalities have been assigned to conduct the programme of Epic in English Bazaar and Old Malda areas in consultation with the election observer. The election officials were facing problem to conduct the programme owing to shortage of time. It may be recalled that only 14 days were allotted to conduct the programme of Epic distribution in two municipal areas, but practically it was a wrong decision. “The number of polling stations in Old Malda municiplaity was 27 and in English Bazaar it was 89 , but only 14 days were allowed to complete the programme”, an official said. — SNS