By Vijay Chavan, Pune Mirror | May 18, 2015, 02.30 AM IST
Citizens who reached the Jeevandhara Vidyalay on Sunday for the registrations found that the booth was being attended to only by a lone peon (top), with not a single officer from the district administration present on duty and no board to indicate that no one was showing up either. PIC: MAHENDRA KOLHE
No Aadhaar-EPIC link for Peth residents
Over 7,000 voters were turned away from the Rasta Peth centre on Sunday, as only person manning the booth was a peon
Sunday duties tend to weigh down heavy on many employees and officers from the district administration decreed to man the booth that was put up for citizens to register themselves in order to link their Aadhaar numbers with voter's identity cards at Rasta Peth managed to emphatically drive home this point.
The first day of the district administration's special drive to link citizens' Aadhaar numbers with their corresponding Elector's Photo Identity Cards (EPIC), in order to avoid duplication in future, came a cropper. Except for a peon, no officer turned up at Jeevandhara Vidyalay, a school in Rasta Peth, where a sizeable slice of over 7,000 citizens from Rasta Peth, Somwar Peth and Mangalwar Peth were supposed to register. Mirror visited the venue in the afternoon and maintained a check on it through the day, only to learn that thousands of voters had to go away disappointed. Not only did no booth level officer (BLO) turn up, citizens were all kept waiting in the wings as well.
Said Mushtaq Patel, a resident of the neighbourhood, "There are only a few days marked for the drive. All of us are usually very busy in the weekends and yet we made the effort to fulfil our duties towards the government. But this was very frustrating. Not only was no responsible officer present at the venue, there was no apology either for this lapse. It's almost as if they went out to make fun of common people," said Patel. Patel visited the centre thrice on Sunday, hoping an officer might turn up at some point. "A simple notice on a board would have sufficed," he said. Another resident Deoram Devkule, a retired banker, put away many important tasks to make it to the booth. He waited for an hour and eventually called it a day. "Even the peon was not aware of the development," said Devkule. When homemaker Meena Raju Swami came across the advertisement in local papers on Sunday morning, she decided to trade her time with her family for registering her name here. "I had promised my family a special Sunday spread. I am embarrassed that it was compromised for nothing," said Swami. Having faced the defunct centre through the afternoon, small-scale businessman Devdatta Patole, rushed to the Ganesh Peth centre, hoping to get some information but the authorities there were of no help. "They are simply playing with our patience by conducting such non-productive drives," he said.
While district collector Saurabh Rao was not available for comment through the day, deputy district election officer Samiksha Chandrakar shrugged it off, saying, "The drive is conducted during vacations and many BLOs are on leave. That may be the reason for the non-attendance at the centre. However, I will look into the case and pull up the responsible officers." A source in the department, however, said no punitive action is likely to be taken against the erring officers. Instead, she however went on to say that those who were affected could have landed up at the Council Hall for the registration, brushing aside the fact that not only was no announcement to that effect was made, it was also against the policy of decentralisation.
The district administration kicked off the special drive under National Electoral Rolls Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP). Through television and newspaper advertisements, it had declared the dates of May 17, June 21 and July 12 at 7,475 polling booths in the district for the benefit of citizens.
AIM OF THE SPECIAL DRIVE
The special drive was to focus on the collection of details of Aadhaar card, voluntary disclosure of duplication of names, improvement of image quality in the electoral roll as well as giving mobile numbers and email addresses. The ECI, under this special drive, wants to have a clean electoral roll sans any defects, errors or multiple entries
