Challenges in the Management of Electoral Rolls
(Presented by D. Anandan, IAS, District Collector cum Magistrate, East Sikkim, Gangtok)
Electoral Rolls are the basis of any election. It is the basic document without which an
election cannot be conducted. The electoral rolls define the contours of an election in
terms of the voters who are to vote in an election. The fidelity of an election to a large
extent depends on the accuracy of the rolls. Hence the need to ensure an accurate and
acceptable Electoral rolls.
The responsibility of preparation and regular maintenance of the Electoral Rolls is
entrusted with the District Electoral Registration Officers and their subordinate officers by
the Election Commission of India, which in turn is responsible for the superintendence,
direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls under Article 324 of the
Constitution of India. To fulfil this constitutional obligation, a huge machinery starting from
the Election Commission of India to the Booth Level Officers is necessary. It is the untiring
efforts of this machinery for the past many years and the continuous and persistent refining,
reengineering and redesigning that has brought the Electoral Rolls in its present shape and
form. However, the responsibility of the machinery never stops at a point. Since the rolls
are dynamic in its very nature, the struggle of this machinery to keep up to its reputation
continues for ever.
It is the intensive revisions, yearly summary revisions and the
continuous updation of the Electoral Rolls carried out by this machinery that keeps the rolls
alive.
The fidelity of the rolls had been put to test in many past elections but to a large
extent the rolls have withstood the tests of time. The secret behind this success is the strict
vigil and monitoring by the Election Commission and its officials. The continuous updation
of the form and content and regular instructions both in election and non-election years
have definitely played its part in guaranteeing a widely acceptable Electoral Roll.
However, this has been never an easy task. Numerous challenges impede the efforts
of the election machinery. Lack of awareness among the electors, varying efficiency levels
of the election staff, size of the electorate & remoteness, lack of technical back up support,
frequency of revisions, attitude of indifference of the political parties and voters and the
dynamic nature of the rolls are some of the challenges the election machinery at the district
level has to face in the process of keeping the rolls up to date.
Essentials of an Electoral Roll
Accuracy, Acceptability, complete coverage, authenticity and being up-to-date are the
basic essentials of an Electoral Roll.
The Electoral Roll should be as accurate as possible. The names should be correctly
spelt, the relationship should be correctly defined, the sex cannot go wrong, age should be
precise and the address should be error-free. Even a minor deviation from this essentiality
brings downs the accuracy of the rolls. The introduction of photo electoral rolls has further
enhanced the need for accuracy. Mismatch of photos, lack of clarity in the picture, and
even absence of the photograph renders the rolls inaccurate and incomplete. While all
eligible citizens are to be included in the Electoral Roll, no foreigner or ineligible person can
be included in it. Therefore a constant effort is required to ensure the accuracy of the rolls.
Secondly, the Rolls being a common property of all, including the political parties,
needs to be acceptable to all the stakeholders. The differing nature of the ideology,
interests and concerns of the political parties makes it all the more difficult to satisfy one
and all. Political parties complaining of voters of a particular locality or supposedly of a
particular party having been deliberately not included in the Rolls or deleted from the Rolls
is a common scene of elections of late. Casting aspersions on the election machinery,
especially by those in the opposition, starts from the stage of electoral roll preparations. To
come out clean of these aspersions, it is very essential for the electoral machinery to work
above board and to make sure that the Electoral Rolls are acceptable to all.
Thirdly, complete coverage of all eligible voters of a territory is another major
requirement which often tests the fidelity of the rolls. An accurate electoral roll is not
necessarily a complete electoral roll. A typical electoral roll is supposed to include all
eligible voters within a defined territory. But it doesn’t happen so always. Inclusion of
names in the voters list is on an application made by an eligible voter and it is not a suo
moto action by the Electoral Registration Authorities. So, completeness of the coverage can
be achieved only to that extent to which the electors apply for inclusion. However, those
who apply and are eligible need to be included in the rolls and to this extent the authorities
are responsible for the completeness of the rolls.
Fourthly, the Electoral Rolls are required to be authentic. These days the Electoral
Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) are widely used as a proof of identification of an individual. For
example, EPICs are accepted as proof of one’s identity while travelling by rail/air, obtaining
a Ration Card, PAN Card, opening a bank account and at various other occasions which
requires identity or residential proof. These are relied upon by both Government machinery
as well as others. An entry in the Electoral Roll is considered as a prima facie proof of one’s
Indian citizenship. Such is the value of an entry in Electoral Roll and EPIC that it is extremely
important for the rolls to be authentic.
Fifthly, the rolls need to be updated regularly. The electoral rolls are dynamic in
nature, meaning thereby, the rolls keep changing continuously. What was correct yesterday
may not be the same today.
Migration of voters, growing population, changing
relationships, constantly changing age, new eligible voters and death of existing voters are
some of the factors which constantly renders the rolls obsolete and hence the need to keep
it updated.
Challenges in Management of Electoral Roll
In the pursuit of ensuring the above mentioned essentialities of an Electoral Roll, the
Electoral Registration Authorities have to face and overcome many challenges in the process
of Electoral Roll Management.
First and foremost challenge is the sheer magnitude of the electoral population in
India. To maintain a database of millions is a herculean task. Every other activity done for
the preparation of Electoral Roll or conduct of an election is in large scale. The number of
officials and staff involved in an election or election related activities may sometimes be
near to or more than the population of a small country. Such is the enormity of the task
that even a mere thought of it sometimes makes it seem impossible.
The Census operations covering the entire population of the country are undertaken
once in ten years. However, the electoral revision, which comprises almost 60% of the
census population, has to be done at least once in a year. This means a major portion of a
decadal activity is being done annually by the electoral machinery. This fact alone very
easily brings out the complexity and magnitude of the electoral roll management.
Adding up to this challenge was the recent delimitation of constituencies. This
exercise not only required strict compliance of the related legislations and guidelines but
also involved the total re-arrangement of the Electoral Roll. Revenue blocks and villages
were shifted from one constituency to another and the Electoral Rolls followed suit.
However, thanks to improvement in computer technology and constant support from
Election Commission of India in terms of hardware and software requirements, this exercise
was completed within the given time and satisfactorily and even the elections as per the
delimited constituencies were successfully held in the year 2009.
Secondly, the remoteness and lack of communication facilities pose another major
challenge in the electoral roll management. The Booth Level Officers (BLOs) are forced to
sometimes trek for very long distances to collect data of a few voters.
As already
mentioned, what the census enumerators do once in ten years are done very often by the
BLOs.
The difficulty in reaching these voters dampens the spirits of even the most
enthusiastic of the BLOs. The easy way out followed by them sometimes is to ignore such
voters, of course, at the cost of completeness of the electoral rolls. Similarly the voters in
such remote localities show least importance and interest in enrolling their names in the
rolls and have deprived themselves of their right to exercise their franchise. Achieving 100%
coverage of EPIC also suffers due to such remoteness and difficulty in reaching the voters.
Thirdly, the illiteracy, ignorance and lack of awareness among the mass is another
impediment in the management of the rolls. Some of the voters do not know how to fill up
the applications for inclusion/deletion/transfer correctly, what are the supporting
documents that need to be enclosed with the application, to whom and when it should be
submitted, how and with whom to follow up to know whether applications were considered
or not and so on and so forth. Any number of awareness programmes, advertisements,
publicity, pamphlets and posters fail to educate them due to their illiteracy. As already
mentioned, the remoteness adds up to the problem of reaching these awareness
programmes to them. Incomplete application, incorrect particulars, lack of supporting
documents and even failure to sign or give their thumb impression at times, renders the
application invalid and those who are eligible otherwise are missed out from the electoral
rolls. Though the BLOs are instructed to guide the voters in filling up the forms, many a
times, it is found that almost half the applications are rejected due to want of supporting
documents or incomplete or unsigned applications. Failure to understand the importance of
inclusion of names in the electoral roll due to ignorance is the reason for not being able to
completely cover all the eligible electorate of a territory.
Fourthly, the varying levels of efficiency and sincerity among the officials of election
machinery, especially among the field functionaries, make it difficult to ensure the
essentialities of the electoral roll. The BLOs come from a varied background with different
levels of motivation. They come from different departments and have varying levels of
work burden depending upon the department for which they work. Their educational
qualification varies widely. These differences in their motivation levels, efficiency, sincerity,
educational qualifications, their regular work load in the parent department, etc make a
huge difference in their relative performances. While some of them have been excellent in
executing the given task, others are a miserable failure.
Any number of training
programmes, printed guidelines and refresher courses, fail to make an impact over them.
Constant supervision and monitoring and threat of punitive action for negligence in duty
sometimes fail to be sufficient deterrents. Though the concept of BLOs was designed to
have an official posted permanently at the area comprised within a Polling booth, frequent
transfer of these officials by their parent departments renders the concept useless. A new
incumbent to the post is a fresher for the election activities and all the training programmes
needs to be repeated for him. By the time he is fully trained to manage the electoral roll
and the electors of his area, there is a bright chance of him being transferred to another
place. This process continues regularly posing a great challenge to the District Electoral
Registration Officers.
The immensity of the exercise of electoral management involves huge funds. The
frequency of revisions and financial limitations do not permit the district authorities to pay
handsome honorariums to the BLOs. The meagre amount given to the BLOs neither
compensates them fully nor motivates them, especially when they have to trek to far flung
areas, work for additional hours and at odd hours, work on Sundays and also to complete
the work within the given deadlines. Under these circumstances, persuading the BLOs to
get the desired output itself is a big challenge.
Fifthly, the frequency of revisions of the Electoral Roll is so high that the BLOs and
other election officials lose interest in it. Summary Revision, Intensive Revision, Cleansing of
Electoral Rolls, multiple phases of Electoral Photography, Correction of Electoral Rolls and
regular updation of the rolls are spaced so closely and frequently that it gives an impression
to the election officials that they are engaged in electoral roll management all the year
round. Repetition and monotony leads to boredom and resultant loss of enthusiasm. The
DEROs who are also the District Collectors and Magistrates of the District are entrusted with
a variety of other functions also that they cannot give the same amount of time and focus
for every revision. Frequent revisions don’t create any sensationalism and therefore doesn’t
attract the media as well.
However, regular revision of the Electoral Rolls, though a challenge, cannot be ignored
for the sake of an up-to-date and clean Electoral Roll. This calls for a dedicated cadre of
election field staff who would be focusing exclusively on election and election related
activities.
Sixthly, the attitude of indifference of the political parties as well as the voters is
another challenge. The political parties wake up to the Electoral rolls only during the
elections. At other times, the electoral rolls are forgotten. All hell breaks loose and all
chaos erupts when they find out just before the elections that some of their prospective
voters’ names are not appearing in the Electoral Roll. Blame game starts and the election
machinery is doubted for its impartiality and the ability to conduct free and fair elections. If
only these parties or the voters had the time to point out the errors and deficiencies of the
roll at the appropriate hour, the problem could have been nipped in the bud.
But,
invariably, no one bothers about the Electoral Roll in a non-election year. It is considered to
be a routine and mundane exercise which the district officials are ordained to do.
The importance of the electoral rolls is never realised by the political parties in nonelection years. The same is the case with the voters too. Any number of advertisements
through newspapers, local television channels, pamphlets, posters or banners would not
have the ability to move the voters from their comfort, of taking the trouble of going to
their respective polling stations and checking for the accuracy of their entry in the roll.
However, the poll day brings in the effect, even without any publicity, in one single day.
Absence of names in the rolls when the voters arrive at the polling stations is sufficient
enough to trigger clash and chaos at the polling booth. The presiding officers & polling
officers have to bear the brunt of such disputes and the entire election machinery starting
from the Election Commission to the BLOs would at once become the villains of the voters
who have been denied to exercise their right to vote. Media adds up the necessary spice to
the story to brand the entire election machinery as inefficient and insensitive to the voters.
Seventhly, the lack of technical support in the form of equipment and manpower at
remote districts is a huge impediment in the electoral roll management. There is no
denying the fact that the computerisation of the electoral roll has immense benefits, but in
districts where there is non-availability of hardware/software technicians to attend to faults
in the system and in the absence of back-end support, the efforts to be taken to maintain
the system are a daunting task.
The efficiency of the NIC officials also differs across the board. Frequent break down
of computers and its peripherals causes immense delay in updation and makes it difficult to
stick to the deadlines of the commission. Photography campaigns for the EPIC had its own
problem. The entire computer system, camera and UPS had to be carried from village to
village to capture the images of the voters. While some villages had no electricity for
powering the systems, some villages didn’t have voters turning out for the occasion in time
leading to time overruns and cost overruns.
Both system errors and human errors
contributed their share in the mixing up of photographs, missing of names, duplication, and
even loss of entire database. Sometimes, lack of back up data has put the district officials to
a lot of trouble when the primary data gets lost. Unless the computer systems are backed
up by proper technical support the full benefits of computerisation cannot be achieved and
will be more of a bane than boon.
Finally, the very dynamic nature of the electoral roll throws up a lot of challenge in its
proper management. The rolls are dynamic because it keeps changing every day. The
details it contained yesterday may not be correct today. The voters keep migrating from
one place to another and demand for transfer or transposition of their names to the new
place of residence. Those who attain 18 years of age apply for inclusion of their names. As
and when a voter dies, his name has to be deleted from the Electoral Rolls. Voters may spell
their names differently or may change their names and it needs to be incorporated. Double
or more entries need to be identified and deleted. Mismatch of photographs has to be
rectified. Objections to entries have to be heard, examined and disposed off. New EPICs
with the corrected particulars are to be issued. Those who have lost their EPICs are to be
given duplicates. This is just an example of how frequently the rolls are subjected to
change. And effecting these changes accurately, in time and to the satisfaction of the voters
in the backdrop of challenges already discussed in preceding paragraphs, is undoubtedly an
overwhelming task.
Facing the Challenge
The Electoral Roll has been evolving with time. The form and content of the rolls have
seen many changes from the day of its origin. Election Commission of India has strived to
consistently upgrade and transform the rolls as an effective and acceptable tool for the
conduct of elections and the effort continues till date. Barring few criticisms here and there,
the Electoral Rolls have withstood the tests of time. This has been established beyond
doubt at each of the elections held so far.
Notwithstanding the challenges encountered, remarkable achievements have been
made by the Election Commission of India and other functionaries at the district and field
levels in past many years. The Commission has introduced innovative concepts specific to
the challenges faced. The Commission has instructed the CEOs and DEOs to upload the
Electoral Roll in their websites along with search facility for wider publicity and
transparency. This would help the voters to check their entries in the Electoral Roll from the
comfort of their drawing rooms. This also would help in timely reporting of any errors in the
roll. Help Lines, SMS based query and Interactive Voice Response Systems have also been
introduced with the same intention.
The decision of the Commission to maintain the photograph in binary format and
other particulars of the electors in Unicode in single database will ensure that there is no
mismatch of photographs. Similarly, a single and centralised database with facility for
online updation and management of the rolls is soon to replace the existing system and this
for sure is a big step ahead in ensuring an error-free and up-to-date Electoral Rolls.
For the greater involvement of the political parties in the process of Electoral Roll
Management, the system of appointing Booth Level Agents (BLAs) by political parties has
been introduced by the Commission. The role of BLAs would be similar to the BLOs and
would help in timely updation of Electoral Rolls.
The recent revision of honorarium to BLOs and linking the honorarium to performance
is a right step for motivating the better performing officials. However, it is still felt
necessary that an exclusive cadre of election staff at the booth level would be of much
greater help than appointing the line department officials as BLOs.
Constant monitoring, supervision and guidance of the Election Commission leave very
little scope of deviation from the desired output. Similarly appointment of Roll Observers in
the line of Election Observer has further enhanced the monitoring at the field level for
greater efficiency and effectiveness of the roll management.
Conclusion
Refining and redefining the Electoral rolls is a never-ending process. The electoral
machinery should strive to take the stakeholders along in this endeavour. No stone should
be left unturned in its pledge to deliver an Electoral Roll that can meet up the standards of
accuracy, authenticity and reliability and an Electoral Roll that can secure the confidence
and trust of the voters of this country. This is easier said than done in the largest democracy
of the world. But with the experience, expertise and excellence of the Election Commission
of India, this target is never insurmountable.
D. Anandan, IAS
District Collector cum Magistrate,
East Sikkim, Gangtok