By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, May 5: As many as 524 duplicate Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPICs) have been detected in Meghalaya.
Disclosing this on Monday, Chief Electoral Officer BDR Tiwari said the 524 EPICs had the same number.
“All the cases have been allowed and given a new EPIC number,” he said, adding that a similar exercise to identify duplicate EPICs was carried out in different states.
Meanwhile, it was informed that the Election Commission of India (ECI) is developing a new user-friendly digital interface for the electors and other stakeholders such as election officials, political parties and civil society.
The new one-stop platform, ECINET, will integrate and reorient over 40 of ECI’s existing mobile and web applications. ECINET will have an aesthetic User Interface and a simplified User Experience by providing a singular platform for all electoral-related activities. This move is also designed to alleviate the burden of the users for downloading and navigating multiple Apps and remembering different logins.
ECINET is expected to benefit nearly 100 crore electors and the entire electoral machinery comprising over 10.5 lakh booth level officers, around 15 lakh booth level agents appointed by political parties, nearly 45 lakh polling officials, 15,597 assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs), 4,123 EROs and 767 district election officers (DEOs) across the country.
ECINET has already reached an advanced stage of development and rigorous trials are being conducted to ensure smooth functionality, ease of use, and robust cybersecurity measures. It is being developed after an elaborate consultative exercise involving 36 CEOs of all the states/UTs, 767 DEOs and 4,123 EROs of their states/UTs and after reviewing 76 publications comprising 9,000 pages of the electoral framework, instructions and handbooks issued by the ECI from time to time.