Bhubaneswar: Chief Electoral Officer R. S. Gopalan today held a detailed discussion with the representatives of different political parties of the state to revise the voter list for the year 2025 and to prepare a new and error-free final voter list.
In the meeting, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Satrughna Kar expressed through a PowerPoint that the block level officers went door to door from August 20th to October 18th and revised the voter list in detail. Previously, 58 electoral registration officers were working, but recently 133 electoral registration officers are engaged in this work. 119 officers were employed for 119 assembly constituencies and 14 officers were employed for remaining 28 assembly constituencies.
The number of 37,809 polling stations has been increased to 38,067 polling stations and 58 new polling stations have been created. As per the recommendation of the District Election Officers, the locations of 14 polling stations have been changed with the approval of the Election Commission. The names of 15 polling stations have been changed.
Integrated draft electoral roll will be published on 29th of October. Claims and objections can be raised from 29th of October to 28th of November. 4 ‘Special Campaign’ programs will be undertaken during this voter list revision period. This special campaign will be held on November 2nd and 10th and November 16th and 24th. On these days, booth-level officers will be present at all the booths in the state and will provide all the facilities to the voters by registering their name in the voter list. Senior officials of each district will visit the said special campaign program as roll observers. 11 senior IS officers, including 3 RDCs, will work as roll supervisors in different districts. All claims and objections will be resolved by December 24. By January 1, 2025, the names of dead persons and the wrongly listed names will be deleted. The final publication of electoral roll of the state will be done on January 6, 2025.
Voters, especially young voters, can apply at home by downloading ‘Voters Helpline App’ from Google Play to register their name in the voter list. Our state Odisha holds an excellent rank in terms of online voter registration. Registration through online is very easy and simple. If there is any error in the voter list, the public can also apply in the prescribed form. For example: Form No-6 for adding names to the list, Form No-6A for registration of names of NRI voters, Application in Form No-7 for removal of names from the list or complaint and Form No-8 for correction of residence or photographs, additional CEO Sri Kar expressed.
The Chief Electoral Officer advised the political parties to give special attention to inclusion of voters, especially the new voters in the voter list, to provide all kinds of facilities to the voters above the age of 18 years (becoming 18 soon) to submit application forms and to attract the new voters to register online.
In this meeting, Bijay Naik from BJD, Sandipta Das from Aam Aadmi party, Madhusudan Yadav from Bahujan Samaj Party were present. Additional Chief Electoral Officer Mihir Mohanty and other officials were present.