EC Kicks Off Updation Of Electoral Rolls For Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra & Jammu and Kashmir

Besides, the General Election to the Legislative Assembly of UT of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) is also to be conducted for constituting a new house after delimitation of Constituencies. Witnessing the huge participation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in the recently concluded Lok Sabha Elections, the Commission has also directed for the updation of the electoral rolls in the UT of J&K with July 1, 2024, as the qualifying date.

The Commission firmly believes that pure, inclusive and updated electoral rolls are the foundation of free, fair and credible elections. To ensure the fidelity of the electoral roll, the Commission is giving special emphasis on the conduct of intensive pre-revision activities before the publication of the draft electoral roll.

Pre-revision activities would mainly include:

1. House to House survey by the BLOs: Booth Level Officers shall make house-to-house visits within their area of jurisdiction to collect the following information:
   • Un-enrolled eligible citizen (eligible on 01.07.2024)
   • Multiple entries/dead electors/permanently shifted electors
   • Corrections in the ER entries
2. Rationalization/Re-arrangement of Polling Stations:

The Commission has been endeavouring to rationalisation of the polling stations to bring the polling stations nearer to even smaller habitation for the convenience of voters and, at the same time eliminate the scope of intimidation, silent or otherwise, which inhibits free exercise of voting rights. With the same intent, the Commission before the Lok Sabha elections 2024 vide its instructions dated 22nd September 2023 had directed the Chief Electoral Officers of all the States/UTs for the setting up of polling stations at locations most convenient to electors in the High Rise/Group Housing societies, slum dwelling clusters in an urban area and also where outgrowth has taken place in the expanding urban/semi-urban/rural areas. It has been experienced during the recently held Lok Sabha elections that there was a substantial-high percentage of voting turnout in such polling stations in comparison to the polling stations set up apart from the residential societies, etc. Therefore, the Commission once again directed CEOs of these states/UT to conduct an extensive survey during the ongoing exercise of rationalization of polling stations to identify those urban areas where Group Housing Societies and high-rise residential buildings are located have adequate rooms/common facilitation areas/community halls/schools to set up a polling station to cater to the resident electors, after following the due procedure.

3. Improvement of image quality ensuring good quality photographs, by replacing blurred, poor quality not-to-specification and non-human images in the roll, wherever necessary.

The schedule for the SSR would be as follows: