Identification Of Bogus Voters

Question by: Pratima Bhoumik, Ranjeetsinha Hindurao Naik-Nimbalkar, Bhagirath Chaudhary, Devji Mansingram Patel

1. Whether the Govenment proposes to implement any concrete plan to identify bogus voters and also check bogus voting in General Elections held in the country; and
2. if so, the time by which it is likely to be implemented and if not, the reasons therefor?

Answer by: Minister of Law and Justice, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology (Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad)

The Election Commission of India has taken several measures to remove the duplicate/multiple/repeated entries from the electoral rolls, some of them are as under: -

1. Running of ‘De-duplication software’ at the polling booth and Assembly Constituency level to identify lists of possible duplicate/repeated entries before revision of electoral rolls.
2. House to house verification and collection of information regarding dead/shifted voters by Booth Level Officer (BLO).
3. The Commission has launched Voter Helpline mobile App & ‘Voter Portal’ in which a person can check whether he/she/any other person is enrolled at two or more places and report to the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) concerned to take appropriate action for deletion of duplicates/multiple registration.
4. Uploading of electoral rolls at Chief Electoral Officer’s website and displaying of the same at ERO’s office and at designated locations for public scrutiny.
5. The Commission has ordered several electoral roll purification drives from time to time in the States/UTs to remove duplicate entries in electoral roll, in which EROs concerned find out probable duplicates and after getting the same verified from the field BLOs take necessary action to remove such duplicates following due procedure of law. Apart from the drive, EROs also remove such duplicates/entries by continuous updation of electoral roll.