Bogus voters beware, this software will catch you

Pune: To manage its mounting workload before elections, the Pune District Election Department will soon make use of a high-tech measure that stores voter photos, maintaining an up-to-date list to prevent malpractices during elections. The branch is currently busy separating duplicate, dead and shifted voters in all the 21 assembly constituencies in the Pune region.

"To make the work process much easier, it was suggested that we install the Electoral Roll Management System (ERMS)," said Apurva Wankhede, deputy district election officer. The ERMS software helps generate Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) by storing the photo of the voter, which would help prevent bogus voting.

The system shall be uploaded most probably this month, she said. "In fact, ERMS can help us maintain standardisation and bring about uniformity in the electoral rolls throughout the district and its respective constituencies," Wankhede said.

Wankhede said the ERMS software system was based on a centralised electoral database with an on-line database management system. It would facilitate the efficient handling of the Electoral roll with photos. "It can prevent any error in the voters' list. Our focus will be to find out duplicate voters among the present 65,47,970 voters in the district," she said.

The work of manually collecting information about duplicate, dead and shifted voters has been started from August 1 and will be completed by November 15, 2011. "Our booth-level officers are busy visiting voters from door to door to confirm information about them and also get photographs and mobile numbers of each and every voter," said Wankhede.

Wankhede said the list of the new voters who will complete 18 years shall also be added in the list. With the help of the ERMS, the voters' list shall be finalised on January 5, 2012. "We will also release a draft roll for suggestions and objections before coming out with the final list," she said.

Neela Satyanarayan, State Election Commissioner, said ERMS would be used extensively to update the voters' list according to the latest Census. The municipal elections for Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation are scheduled for February 2012.

Ensuring efficiency
The Election Commission of India, in its directives to the states, has been continuously directing each state to implement a comprehensive Electoral Roll Management System (ERMS) to facilitate efficient handling of the electoral roll by including photos. The database used by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to generate the Electoral Roll had been developed by a private party and maintained in MS-Access. Goa was the first state to develop and use the ERMS soft ware in March 2010.