Voter verification programme from Sept 1

New Delhi: The Election Commission’s new mega Electors Verification Programme (EVP), which seeks to update electoral rolls through crowd sourcing, had launched on September 1 across the country, officials said.

Under the programme, a voter from each family will get a username and password, allowing a person to upload all documents related to electoral registration and tag similar details about his or her family members, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ranbir Singh said at a press conference here.

“These details will then be verified by block level officers (BLOs) and, therefore, it will save a lot of time. The idea is also to empower voters to assess electoral roll details, self-authenticate and then get mistakes rectified, if any,” he said.

The ‘mega million’ launch will take place in all States and Union territories. It will be done by 36 CEOs at the State headquarters level, by 740 district electoral officers at the district level and by BLOs and electoral registration officers in around one million polling stations, the EC said.

“In Delhi, the EVP will be launched from 14,000 different places. The programme will take place in campaign mode from September 1 to October 15.

“The purpose is to improve the health of electoral rolls and augment enrolment of all eligible citizens during special summary revision of the electoral rolls,” Singh told reporters.

He said, the summary revision draft will be published



after that, with cut-off date being January 1, 2020, and the final roll will be published by the first or second week of January. The Delhi CEO said, the EVP programme can be effected both online and offline.

“Online, a voter can go to the NVSP website and do the desired registration or on Voter helpline mobile app of the EC. Offline, voters can go to any of the voters’ centre spread across 70 Assembly constituencies or through nearly 550 CSCs (Common Service Centres) spread across the city, if a person is not so tech-savvy” Singh said.

Each CSC will charge a nominal fee, like Re 1 for uploading a document or Rs 2 for photo upload and Rs 1 for submitting Form 6. The fee will be displayed at each CSC and also on the Delhi CEO website, he said.

The EC in a statement said the EVP is “meant for improvement of health of electoral rolls and enrolment of all eligible citizens during special summary revision 2020 by verification or authentication of electors’ details through crowd sourcing and verification through field inputs by BLOs which is scheduled to be launched in all States/UTs on September 1”.

The Election Commission of India has decided that in addition to the already approved seven documents passport, driving license, Aadhaar, ration card, identity card for government/semi-government officials, bank passbooks, and farmer’s identity card; three more documents will also be used for authentication of electors’ details.