Photo Identity Card centres to be operational shortly
Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta (right), at a training programme in Coimbatore on Tuesday.Designated Elector’s Photo Identity Card (EPIC) centres will become operational in every Assembly constituency by mid-May, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Naresh Gupta said here on Tuesday. He was talking to reporters after a programme for master trainers for the EPIC centres in Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, Salem, Namakkal, Erode, Coimbatore and the Nilgiris districts. Joint Chief Electoral Officer (Computerisation) Jayashree Muralidharan and Officer on Special Duty Pragadha also addressed the master trainers, including the election tahsildars and electoral roll registration officers.
Mr. Gupta said within the next one week, these master trainers would train the next level of officials such as assistant electoral roll registration officers, programmers, EPIC centre operators and municipal commissioners and their staff.
The CEO’s office had already written to the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) seeking State Wide Area Network (SWAN) connectivity for these centres. Till then, the centres could use the computer system at District Election Offices for data entry and other purposes.
The centres, on payment of Rs.15, will entertain requests for incorporation of corrections such as initials, spelling mistakes, address change (owing to change of residence) and any other miscellaneous endorsements. Lost cards can be replaced at these centres. Hitherto, EPIC card operations remained seasonal. Henceforth they will become round-the-year and these centres will be located at taluk offices in every Assembly constituency, he said. Mr. Gupta said realignment of electoral rolls as per the delimitation of constituencies would be done centrally at the CEO’s office in Chennai.
The realigned electoral rolls would be sent to District Election Offices (DEO) for carrying out field verification to ensure that no area was left out. Voters facing change of constituencies as a result of the delimitation will not face the problem of their EPIC cards getting invalidated and need not change their cards, he said. Mr. Gupta said as far as printing of EPIC cards was concerned, the State had achieved 98 per cent and distribution had touched 95 per cent. As far as photo voter rolls were concerned, the State had achieved 98.6 per cent. The electoral population in the State had touched 4 crore, he said. Draft rolls would be published in July and the final roll by August-end.
