SALEM, May 19, 2015
Updated: May 19, 2015 06:05 IST
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Chief Electoral Officer Sandeep Saxena at a meeting with officials in Salem on Monday.
— PHOTO: E. LAKSHMI NARAYANAN
Salem has achieved the distinction of being the first district in the entire country to register cent per cent data collection achievement under the ongoing National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) of the Election Commission of India.
Data on the Aadhaar number, e-mail address, mobile number and landline phone number of all the 27,29,548 voters in the eleven Assembly constituencies in the district had already been collected.
“Salem registered this achievement on May 2 to become the first district in the whole of India to successfully complete the data collection process,” said Sandeep Saxena, speaking at a training programme on seeding of Aadhaar in Electoral Rolls at the Collectorate here on Monday.
The achievement has been brought to the notice of the Election Commission of India. The Commission will honour the Collector K. Maharabushanam in recognition of the achievement soon, Mr. Saxena said.
NERPAP is an exercise in progress to like the Elector’s Photo Identity Card with the Aadhaar number of the registered voter with the objective of creating an error-free identification system in the country, especially by removing duplications.
Salem district is on the threshold of another achievement under the same programme. The second step under the NERPAP is data entry. Salem district till Sunday evening recorded 99.86 per cent achievement on data entry.
Referring to the progress of NERPAP in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Saxena said the State had registered 96 per cent data entry achievement so far. The entire work will be completed with in a fortnight.
The seeding work (verification of the data fed in the card) will commence on May 21 and the officials have been directed to complete this work in 15 days.