[dropcap]E[/dropcap]astern mirror, on Sunday, November 17, carried a news item headlined “Dead but alive in electoral roll” based on the statement of electoral Roll Observer T.C. Sangtam, while interacting with representatives of political parties, all tribal bodies, administrative officers and public leaders of Kiphire District. This was in connection with the ongoing Summary Revision 01/01/014 as the qualifying date at the Kiphire Deputy Commissioner’s conference hall the previous day.It goes without saying that Sangtam who is Commissioner and Secretary of DYDA had emphasized that the State Government along with the Election department concentrates on accurate E-roll. What has hampered the effort has been the multiple inclusion of names, mismatch of photos, inaccurate birth certificates and inclusion of illegal and migrant voters to cite a few factors. As such, the State could not conduct free and fair elections in the State, he said.
The presence of names of deceased voters in the electoral roll also are known to be cast by proxy voters.
Accordingly, Sangtam appealed to the political parties, all tribal Hohos, student organisations and public leaders of the district to extend full cooperation to the district administration and its functionaries so that an accurate electoral roll could be produced to ensure clean election.
It therefore, stands to reason that along with all the various organisations, public leaders concerned, the people themselves also have a crucial role to play in the quest for this exercise and in conformity and cooperation with the district election machinery.
In a similar vein, the Electoral Roll Observer for Kohima, Shashank Shekhar presided over a meeting attended by DC W. Honje Konyak, ADC and ERO, Konya Asangla Imti. They deliberated on the issue of the EP (Electorate to Population Ratio) in Kohima district which is about 50 per cent. The figure is below the national average of 60 per cent. Some of the reasons on this were that voters enroll in their native villages/districts while they reside in urban areas, suo moto deletion of bogus, or perceived fake voters, or just do not enroll at all etc.
In this meeting, the DC Honje Konyak revealed the presence of a sizeable presence of doubtful citizens in Kohima. In this connection, he expressed the need to rationalize the ILP system along with E-roll criteria. However, the EPIC coverage in Kohima district is almost 100 per cent he claimed.
The matter of bogus employees, voters, teachers has been the bane of our State. Years ago, the then Education Minister transferred several teachers. But the official complaint was that he transferred some who had already passed away. Then later, there have been innumerable cases of “ghost” teachers whose salaries were drawn for a number of years. ‘Substitute teachers’ is a euphemism recently coined for such ghost teachers.Some politicians are even believed to have deleted the names of voters from the E-rolls who they thought did not support them.
Nevertheless, the problem of bogus voters has some roots in our attitude towards work. Local contractors and businessmen more often than not prefer to employ non-Nagas whether qualified or not vis a vis recruiting local youths for all kinds of services. Drivers, mechanics, hotel staff, shop keepers, gardeners, masons, carpenters, plumbers, painters, electricians make up some of these sectors. Over time they settle down In fact, it has been discovered that most of these non-local workers come to Nagaland and learn their trade in-service and even become masters in no time.
Unfortunately, most Naga youth also take jobs ostensibly for permanence but inexplicably give up part way and this affects the interests of the local contractors. As a consequence, the non-locals take undue advantage and even get themselves enrolled as legitimate voters with the assistance of their Naga employers.
The positive quality of non-locals is that they earn and send money back to their homes. In fact, an official survey states that about Rs 500 crores are earned by them in Kohima, Dimapur and Mokokchung only not to speak of the rest.
Thus, to ensure the legitimate rights of voters to exercise their franchise is to motivate our youth to involve in various income earning activities even to the extent of learning on the job. Also our businessmen, major or minor, should encourage them accordingly.
