Over three lakh new voters in J-K

Over three lakh new voters were added during the ongoing special summary revision (SSR) in Jammu and Kashmir, election authorities said Wednesday.

"During the ongoing SSR of photo electoral rolls, with respect to January 1 as the qualifying date, 3,07,984 new voters were added, which is highest as compared to the last four years additions," the officials said.

Besides, they said, 1,25,931 voters were deleted from the roll and 94,659 corrections and modifications were made in the particulars of electors.

In addition, as many as 9,23,654 demographically similar entries were also removed from the rolls and 1,687 logical errors were corrected in the ongoing SSR-2019, the officials said.

To maintain the correctness of the rolls, they said, the multiple entries, duplicates, dead and permanently shifted entries were also removed from the roll.

Lauding the performance of district election officers (DEOs) for updation of electoral rolls during the SSR, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Shailendra Kumar said they successfully completed this important process in a time-bound manner.

Kumar interacted with all DEOs through video conferencing Tuesday and discussed the election management action plans for the forthcoming elections in the state after the last date of disposal of claims and objections under the SSR-2019, an official spokesman said.

"During the marathon discussions, the CEO obtained detailed feedback from each district regarding the steps initiated and their requirements for the smooth conduct of elections," he said.

The spokesman said the issues that prominently figured and were discussed included the functioning of district contact centres (DCC), creation of necessary infrastructure for the polling stations, status of polling stations, facilities of webcasting in the polling stations, requirement and movement of EVMs.

The progress under the Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme, communication plan, transport facilities for the polling parties, security management, celebration of the National Voter's Day, appointment of Booth Level Agents (BLA) by various political parties, publication of electoral rolls, imparting of training to the polling staff and several other allied issues related to the election process also came up for the detailed discussion, he said.

Kumar called upon the officers to put in place all the necessary arrangements well in time to facilitate smooth conduct of elections in the state.

The CEO laid stress on strengthening the DCCs with trained manpower and dedicated communication network to facilitate the citizens with their election-related queries and complaints.

He also called for attending the election-related issues and complaints of the political parties on priority, the spokesman said.