Drive to weed out dual EPICs

VILLUPURAM: To unearth and weed out dual Elector’s Photo Identity Cards in border areas, a joint meeting will be held by District Electoral Officers of Villupuram and Cuddalore with their counterpart in Puducherry on Wednesday, according to Villupuram Collector R. Palanisamy.

Mr. Palanisamy, in his capacity as District Electoral Officer, on Monday carried out a door-to-door verification at Pattanur on the Villupuram-Puducherry border.

Later, he told reporters that the Election Commission had declared that it was against law to possess more than one EPIC.

However, it had come to the notice of polling officials that several households were having dual EPICs.
Deadline

Mr. Palanisamy said that though he had fixed a deadline of April 10 for surrendering additional cards to the Villupuram Revenue Divisional Officer, nobody had done so.

Therefore, the revenue officials would conduct a 100 per cent verification in border areas and if they detected any violations, action would be taken against those voters under Section 31 of the Representation of People’s Act 1950. In the joint meeting to be held in Puducherry, electoral rolls of these areas would come under close scrutiny and through this process, the voters having more than one EPIC would be easily identified.

Mr. Palanisamy also noted that the Election Commission had drawn up a strategy to identify dual EPIC-holders from computerised electoral rolls.Therefore, it was in their own interest such voters should surrender the additional EPICs without delay, he added.

Vanur tahisldar Selvaraj and Public Relations Officer M. Palanisamy accompanied the Collector.