Guwahati, Sept 29: The Assam State Election Commission on Friday published the final photo electoral rolls for the ensuing panchayat elections in the state.
The state election commission informed that the final photo electoral rolls have been published for 40 election districts by the district commissioners/sub-divisional officers of the state, excluding the Sixth Schedule areas and municipal areas.
As many as 23,640 polling stations have been set up for the panchayat polls with 17,800,127 voters, of which 89,86963 are male voters and 88,12885 female voters. Besides, 279 voters are of the third gender.
The panchayat electoral polls are prepared by district/sub-divisional authorities by taking the relevant portion of the concerned Legislative Assembly electoral rolls, as prescribed in the Assam Panchayat (Constitution) Rules, 1995. The state election commission had fixed January 1, 2023 as the date of eligibility.
“This year, the state election commission took the initiative to prepare the panchayat rolls digitally in the state, using an Online Electoral Roll Management System (OERMS) developed by NIC (National Informatics Centre),” the secretary of the state election commission, said in a statement.
Notably, OERMS, a web-based application software, was customised to meet the nuances of the panchayat electoral roll.
“The digital electoral roll enhances transparency, accessibility and purity. This has been done for the first time for panchayat elections in Assam,” the secretary said.
It may be noted that the commission had conducted district and sub-divisional level training of the concerned officials through video conferencing and training by the district informatics centres of NIC for error-free and smooth preparation of the final photo electoral rolls.
“A dedicated team of IT professionals and legal and logistic support members at the Assam State Election Commission continuously toiled for the past few months to ensure that the electoral roll preparation process is carried out smoothly. Accordingly, the draft photo electoral rolls were published on August 25, 2023,” the secretary said.