House panel for single electoral roll

A parliamentary panel has advocated a single electoral roll in the country from panchayati elections to the Lok Sabha polls. The panel has argued that such a step will do away with duplicity in electoral rolls, besides cutting down the poll expenses.

“The parliamentary standing committee feels that a common electoral roll will reduce cost, time, and check electoral malpractice. The panel, therefore, recommends that a common electoral roll be prepared in the country. It can be used from panchayat level to parliamentary elections by the State Election Commissions,” the Standing Committee on Law and Personnel said in its latest report. It underlined that such an initiative would weed out multiple electoral rolls to check corrupt practices during elections.

The report on Demands for Grants (2016-17) of the law ministry tabled in Parliament on Friday stated that the EC and State Election Commissions have separate electoral rolls. “They carry out registration of voters and updating of electoral rolls separately. The numbers of voters in their electoral rolls usually vary,” the report stressed.

Incidentally, the EC is tasked with the responsibility of holding the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.

The State Election Commissions on the other hand, supervise elections for local bodies. It must, however, be noted that the EC had earlier argued for the need to have common electoral rolls in the country. The EC in a letter to then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in November 1999 had underlined that separate rolls prepared by the EC and State ECs “not only create confusion among the electors because their names may be present in one roll but absent in the other, or vice versa, but also result in duplication of effort and expenditure.”

It had also stated that in almost all the cases, the same machinery at the field-level is entrusted with the job of preparing and revising rolls for both types of elections.