T HE C HALLENGE OF M ANAGING E LECTORAL R OLLS IN U TTAR P RADESH R. K. Pandey Joint CEO, UP 2014

T HE O BJECTIVES AND T HE C HALLENGES To maintain Error Free, Clean and Healthy Photo Electoral Roll for 139 million voters in over 1.40 lakh polling stations and 403 Assembly Constituencies. 100% Enrolment of new age voters. Improvement in Gender Ratio Vertical and horizontal integration of services with the ECI at the top and Booth Level Officer (BLO) at the cutting edge level. Preparation and distribution of about 1.26 crore coloured PVC EPICs in a short span of less than 3 months.

T HE O BJECTIVES AND T HE C HALLENGES Man power management for over 1.4 lakh BLOs, more than 1800 EROs and AEROs and organizing their trainings. Cleansing of Electoral Rolls and improving all the indices of Electoral Rolls vis a vis the projected Census data. Ensuring that due legal procedures are followed at EROs/AEROs level. Management of logistics.

T HE C HALLENGE OF VOLUME AND EXQUISITE PROBLEMS OF WORK ; When we printed one copy of electoral rolls to be given to all the recognized political parties we printed about 4 crore pages. We have faced the most minute scrutiny of the print and electronic media, and over and above all this we have had the so-called VIP constituencies with all the problems and cooked up problems raised by batteries of lawyers and professional nuisance makers.

T HE D IFFICULTIES WE FACED We had to handle the intellectual and legal experts, specially from the cities of Noida, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Allahabad and Varanasi. Our machinery and systems have been watched very keenly and our electoral rolls have undergone microscopic examination. We had to attend to upto 200 calls per hour at out call centre and to ensure follow up actions for the grievances raised by the callers.

T HE E XERCISE AND THE NEW PRACTICES Real Time Monitoring Systems were developed for effective monitoring of Electoral Roll preparation work at various levels. Part wise Micro level data Analysis & performance monitoring on Electoral Roll & EPIC Offline software developed for the printing of error list in Electoral rolls on different criteria for field verification by the BLO.

T HE E XERCISE AND THE NEW PRACTICES 23,50,382 repeated EPIC no. were detected which affected 49,71,539 electors. In these cases old EPIC numbers were replaced by the new EPIC numbers. 98,151 electors’ entries had junk characters in the name and relative name fields, for their correction/removal a software was developed and all such characters were cleared lakh electors were found as expired and lakh electors found as shifted, these were deleted to clean the roll further.

T HE E XERCISE AND THE NEW PRACTICES A system of BLO slip was introduced. Names & mobile nos. of BLOs distributed in every house hold. Alphabetic locator pasted in every polling station on camp days. A new mechanism of verification of the draft by the BLOs, of the roll to be finally published was created. BLOs were asked to check and verify whether all the applications that have been received during summary revision have been accounted for and due decisions with respect to all of them have been taken and that no application is unaccounted for, and also that the details of the electors actually match with the details given by them in the application forms. Preparation and distribution of 1.26Crore coloured PVC EPICs

T HE E XERCISE AND THE NEW PRACTICES Targeted SVEEP activities for new age voters this increased their enrolment from lakh to lakh. It was ensured that the logistical supports such as the forms etc. were suitably available at the polling booths and, the latest instructions of the Commission reached the cutting edge level in the shortest period of time. For this the use of IT that is, , messages, phone calls etc was suitably made and real time monitoring was ensured through communication teams. Establishment of Call Centers in 315 Tahsils and a round the clock Call Centre at state level.

G RAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

D E - DUPLICATION P ROCESS De-duplication process was successfully carried out with a layered approach for better accuracy, At Booth level At AC level At State level At Booth level 23 lakh possible duplicates were identified, and After field level verifications 3.29 lakh actual duplicates were deleted.

D E - DUPLICATION P ROCESS At AC level around 71 lakh possible duplicates were identified, and After field level verifications 6.24 lakh actual duplicates were deleted. At State level de-duplication exercise 93 lakh possible duplicates were found with their names repeated at 3.11 crore places, and After field level verifications of all these repeated names lakh were found actual duplicates and were deleted.

S TATE WISE POSSIBLE DUPLICATE REPORT

G RAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

T HE R ESULTS Highest numbers of voters registered during October 2013 to April 2014(Summary and Continuous updation) crore names added in the rolls. Now the numbers of voters is crore (7.59 crore male and 6.28 crore female). Highest ever enrollment of years voters, which is lakh during Summary & Continuous Revision. Gender ratio increased from 815 to 828 during Summary & Continuous Revision Women registration increased substantially. 63 lakh female voters were added in the rolls.

T HE R ESULTS EPIC coverage has been ensured to be practically 100%, from 83% in 2009 Lok Sabha GE. PER percentage increased from 79% in 2009 to 100% in 2014.

G RAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

T HE I MPACT

T HANKS