Sir,

Apropos the report on special voter list revision in SOM dated Nov. 21, I wish to bring to light the following to the attention of the authorities concerned and people’s representatives. I am doing so after considerable struggle for the last 20 months ever since my name was deleted from the voters list for no reason whatsoever just a month before the last Lok Sabha elections.

1. The search engine provided at https://www.nvsp.in has two options to search if a name is included in the voters list or not — by filling the details asked in the first option or by entering the EPIC number. If any one has just applied for inclusion and wants to check if the name has been included, one has to choose only the first option since the EPIC number is yet to be known. 

2. I found that this option does not work consistently in synchronisation with EPIC number (second option). I checked this with respect to my family member whose EPIC is known. By filling the details as per the first option, it returned a zero result. But if the second option is exercised, it returns a positive result showing the entry details in the voters list.

3. This discrepancy needs to be looked into and set right by taking it seriously. There is no way a person who has applied for inclusion, revision of constituency, etc., would know the EPIC number to search with the second option.

4. Even after all the struggle (a long drawn, as per my own experience) to get one’s name enrolled in the list one is not sure if the same is not removed, deleted, etc., just a few weeks before election, as it happened in my case. There should be some authority to approve a deletion and that authority should be made public to be held responsible for wrong deletion.

5. SMS intimation of successful inclusion of name in the voters list must be put to use as also any discrepancy in the application, which might be reason for non-inclusion. Similarly, if an existing entry is going to be removed, SMS must be sent to the voter before actual removal so that the voter has an opportunity to seek redressal. 

Trust the above issues along with many more which make the innocent public to go from pillar to pillar during election time are gone into detail and fix the loopholes.

– Prof. B.S. Shankara (Retd.), Ramakrishnanagar, 24.11.2020

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