Election Commission to start electoral revision in Odisha from Nov 9

Bhubaneswar: The special campaign for electoral roll revision by the Election Commission of India (ECI) will start in Odisha on November 9. Chief Electoral Officer Sushil Kumar Lohani on Friday informed about the same during a review meeting with district collectors and sub-collectors regarding preparedness for the conduct of the special campaign. Explaining to the officers, Lohani informed them that the Commission has made provision for the collection of advance applications from prospective Electors (17+ years) now.

Earlier there was one qualifying date on January 1 of every year for which youths above 18 years had to wait for one year for enrolling themselves in the electoral roll. But from this year, the provision has been made for four qualifying dates starting with each quarter of the year i.e. January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1.

He further informed that during this campaign period, all the applicants who are going to qualify till October 1, 2023, can apply in advance.

Stating that Odisha has made good progress in online enrolment of electors with the "Voter Helpline" app by the citizen independently and the GARUDA app by the booth level officers, he said citizens can use the Voter Helpline app or visit nvsp.in for an online application.

Lohani further informed that the citizens can apply for addition, correction or deletion in the respective forms. They can apply in Form-6 for addition, Form-7 for deletion or objection to any entry and Form-8 for shifting cases, and correction of entries including photographs.

"Now, along with other documents, Aadhaar card can be used for both proof of identity and residence. The applicants may scan and upload the Aadhaar as proof of identity and residence," he added.

The Commission is also encouraging voluntary linking of the Aadhaar number with the EPIC (Voter Card Number) which will facilitate filtering the duplicates and make the voter list error-free.

Odisha is among the top states in the country in achieving the goal of linking EPIC with Aadhaar as more than 77 per cent of the voters in the state have already linked their Aadhaar. The rest can do this during this revision period.

During the revision period, a special campaign will be done on four days in November 12 to 13 and November 26 to 27 when BLOs will be available in the respective polling stations to facilitate the voters.