New Delhi: Law Ministry has proposed that voters should be given a multipurpose national identity card carrying a unique tracking number to keep an accurate head count of the number of voters in a constituency.
Large number of people keep migrating from one constituency to the other, and it becomes extremely difficult for the government to keep a head count of the number of voters.
The ministry said it was the objective of Election Commission to tag every eligible Indian with a voter identity card, in a time bound frame. However, a gap of 30 per cent people not having any voters ID card continues to persist despite campaigns.
"This is partly because of additions to the rolls during annual revisions and due to large scale intra-city and inter-city migration," the ministry said.
Till the last count on January 1, 2005, there were still more than 20 crore eligible Indians who have not yet been issued Election Photo Identity Cards (EPIC), in short voter I-cards, accounting for over 30 per cent of the electorate without a place in the rolls.
Despite campaigns stretched beyond the stipulated timeframe to achieve 100 per cent EPIC coverage, the 30 per cent figure has refused to come down, leading to speculations the constantly shifting humanity may be contributing to this apparently inflated figures.
"The migrating electors, in most cases, do not mention their EPICs, if any, issued in the place of previous residence in the application filed for inclusion of their name in the new electoral roll," it observed.
"A unique multi-purpose identity card is the need of the day. A national identity card can then cover various activities, including that of identification in an electoral roll," it said.
The unique multipurpose card could also be used by the citizens as an all-purpose card for identification, proof of residence, citizenship, date of birth, etc, the ministry added.
(With PTI inputs)
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