Mumbai : Voter IDs are being linked to Aadhaar cards to ascertain the identity of voters. The state electoral office has taken up the task aggressively and the decision was executed at the local body elections earlier this week.
The decision has a potential to enable voters to vote online in future.
The electoral office started the drive to link people’s Aadhaar cards with their voter identity cards with an aim of ridding the electoral rolls of bogus voters.
Nearly 3,10,000 voters in the State have registered to link their Aadhaar cards with the electoral photo identity cards (EPIC). From Mumbai and Thane, only around 16,000 voters have got themselves registered till now.
The largest number of people who have registered themselves are from Hingoli district (43,735), followed by Kolhapur (43,554).
Linking Aadhaar cards with people’s voter ID cards will help the Election Commission to remove bogus IDs from the system and to make voter list transparent, an official from the state election commission has said.
There are a total 8,35,34880 registered voters in the state, out of whom 4,40,77571 are men, 3,94,56271 women and 1,038 fall in the ‘others’ category.
According to the latest Census figures, around 8.07 crore people are above 18 years of age.
Thus, there is a discrepancy between the total the number of people eligible to vote and the total number of voters.
It simply means that there are more than 28 lakh bogus voters present. “These have to be weeded out at the earliest,” the official said.
The voters can log on to the State Election Commission website: http://ceo.maharashtra.gov.in/AadhaarSeed/ to feed their Aadhaar numbers in the EC’s EPIC database, or they can also do so at their electoral registration offices, he added.
65% voting in Gadchiroli villages
Meanwhile, 50 village panchayats in the Maoist-infested Gadchiroli district that went for vote on Friday had on an average 65% voting, state election commissioner J S Saharia told reporters here.
“Village Panchayats in Aheri, Sironcha and Etapalli went for the vote today. The voting was peaceful. The villages in rest of the district would go for vote on April 30. Counting would be on May 2,” he added.
