Express News Service By

CHENNAI: Chief Electoral Officer Sandeep Saxena on Tuesday launched the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) to ensure 100 per cent error-free rolls in the State. The exercise would be completed by May 31.

Addressing the media after chairing an all-party meet at the Secretariat, Saxena said it would end duplication of voters’ names in the electoral database.

There would be special camps on April 12, April 26, May 10 and May 24 (all Sundays). The programme would be completed with the help of political parties, apolitical NGOs, election department officials, and staff of Revenue, Municipal Administration, Education departments.

The EPIC data would be linked with ‘Aadhar’ data of UIDAI for authentication. Voters could feed their Aadhar number by sending SMS to 51969 or calling 1950 or through the mobile application to be launched soon and by using National Voters Service Portal(NVSP) web services through the EC website. Voters could also feed ‘Aadhar’ number by handing over the duly filled up form along with photocopy of both EPIC and Aadhar cards.

The programme aims at voluntary disclosure of multiple entries by voters, on-the- spot disposal of applications by the Electoral Registration Officers if there were supporting documents, improvement of image quality, and collection of voters’ contact information (landline/mobile numbers, e-mail ID) for giving poll-related information to them in future.

Asked whether the State Election Department could cover all the 5.6 crore voters in three months, the CEO said about 70 per cent of voters already had the Aadhar card. Since the EC needed to cover only those over 18 years, it could be completed through special camps for issuing Aadhar card. But Aadhar card was not a must for corrections.

A pilot project for the exercise would be taken up in Gummidipoondi Assembly constituency, Tiruvallur district.

Bharathidasan University had developed a GIS-based method to streamline the distance between polling booths. Through this project, all voters could have their booths at equal distance. Later, the project would be extended to all districts.

Booth-level Agents (BLOs) would be appointed by March 15 to collect details of voters during the door-to-door survey. The voters, with multiple registrations in electoral rolls, could use Form-7 for deletion of names from places except where they resided. They could submit Form-7 through the Web Portal of NVSP or at special camps/other centres such as Common Service Centres etc.

The Chennai Corporation Commissioner Vikram Kapur, who is also the District Election Officer, in a press note, stated that voters without Aadhar card could verify their EPIC details in their respective zonal offices.