Poll panel: No photo ID, no vote

The 71.4 crore voters in India will have to carry a photo-identity card to exercise their franchise in general elections 2009, the Election Commission (EC) said on Monday.

Updated on: Apr 7, 2009, 01:09:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The 71.4 crore voters in India will have to carry a photo-identity card to exercise their franchise in general elections 2009, the Election Commission (EC) said on Monday.

The photo-identity card would be the voter’s card issued by the Election Commission. But for those who do not have the Election Commis-sion’s ID card, the poll panel has laid out a list of 13 documents, like the driving licence, PAN card and passport, that can be produced at the time of casting the vote.

“No voter will be allowed to cast vote without a photo-identity card even though the electoral rolls will have their photos,” said Deputy Election Commissioner J.P. Prakash. All states except Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Nagaland have photo electoral rolls.

“This has been done to make the right of genuine electors more effective and to ensure there is no impersonation,” an order issued under Conduct of Election Rules, said.

But only a few states, like Delhi, have close to 100 per cent coverage.

Voters with valid identity documents will not have to depend on representatives of political parties to find their electoral roll number, necessary to vote.

The EC has directed all returning officers to set up voter assistance booths in each polling station to assist voters in finding their voter number. “This is to provide additional assistance to voters especially in urban areas where there are several polling booths in the same government building,” Prakash said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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