Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi.
Election Commission of India on Tuesday announced that it will launch a nationwide programme to link the server of Registrar of Birth and Death of each district with its server for "automatic deletion" of the voter from the electoral rolls on issuance of the death certificate.
The beginning of the programme would be made from Punjab to tackle the malice of duplicate and invalid voters, the Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said in Amritsar on Tuesday.
Addressing the media persons after holding meeting with representatives of various political parties from Amritsar and Tarn Taran districts, Mr Zaidi said that the deletion of voters on death cannot be left alone on the deceased's family or enumerator but it has to be automated in the system and ECI would like to use latest technological tools to tackle this problem.
He said that Punjab would be a pilot project under its e-District programme and after its success it would be replicated to the other parts of the country.
Referring to the issue raised by representatives of political parties regarding wrong deletions from electoral rolls, Mr Zaidi said that instructions have been issued to all Returning Officers to issue a notice to the voter at his address mentioned in the electoral roll prior to initiation of the deletion process.
He said that after not receiving a reply or objection from the voter, Returning Officers would ensure that lists of voters to be deleted would be displayed in Panchayat Ghars, Block Offices, Common Places, Community Centres and other public places so as to give them an opportunity to raise their objections, if any.
"ECI is committed to make electoral rolls totally factual, error free," he said and sought cooperation of public and political parties to achieve it.
On the issue of far away polling stations, Mr Zaidi said that the ECI is going to formulate a programme under which all polling booths will fall in the radius of two kilometres from voters' residences.