CEC holds meeting with CEOs of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Chandigarh

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora on Thursday said innovative ways of thinking should be adopted to ensure delivery of quality electoral services to the stakeholders. The CEC held a meeting here to review the work done by the booth-level officers (BLOs) during the last summary revision.

A Haryana government release, quoting Arora, said the SVEEP activities and a proper strategy should be evolved for different strata of the society in order to improve their participation. Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) is a flagship programme of the Election Commission (EC) for voter education.

Arora also commented that the objectives of the Electors Verification Programme (EVP) shall be fully achieved before the draft publication 2020 and the summary revision 2020 shall result in a healthy and all-inclusive electoral roll. Those present at the meeting included Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena, Director, EC, A Mona Sreenivas, Haryana Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Anurag Agarwal, Chandigarh CEO Ajoy Kumar Sinha, Punjab CEO S Karuna Raju and Himachal Pradesh CEO Devesh Kumar.

The CEC also directed that the working group on electoral rolls should study in detail and recommend ease in the procedure of electoral services, including enrolment. He further directed to study the improvement in the system of receiving the electoral forms, their digitisation and capturing the field reports at the common service centres.

The CEC said a study group of field officials and technical representatives from research institutions such as the IITs may be deputed to study the present system in leading democracies such as the US, Canada and the UK. It was also decided to send a team of officials from Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh to Canada for the purpose.

It was informed that the availability of BLOs from a pool of working government or semi-government officials was diminishing and at the same remuneration, retired government officials, who had experience, could give full-time service and serve more than one polling station. The CEC further directed that in one district each in Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh, namely Hoshiarpur (Punjab), Mandi (Himachal Pradesh), Rewari (Haryana) and Chandigarh, a pilot study could be undertaken by the CEOs.

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