Lucknow, May 15 (IANS): The Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission (SEC) is considering adopting the Election Commission of India's (ECI) electoral rolls for rural and urban local bodies' elections in the state in future to eliminate duplication and related problems.
This comes in the wake of large-scale complaints of names missing from voters' lists in the recently concluded municipal elections.
"We are working on a project aiming to have a common voter lists for the Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha and panchayat and civic elections in the state," said state election commissioner Manoj Kumar.
"We will launch a pilot project for Lucknow in this regard and hire an expert agency working in the field of artificial intelligence to import ECI's electoral rolls data and prepare voter lists for panchayat and civic elections in the state ensuring that voters' names are common in both the SEC and ECI's electoral rolls," he said.
Kumar said many states had already adopted the ECI's electoral rolls for local body polls.
"Since Uttar Pradesh is a very big state, there are some practical and technical hurdles, and we are trying to overcome the same," he said, admitting many voters who voted in Assembly polls in 2022 did not have their name on the voter lists for urban local body (ULB) polls.
Kumar said a comparatively lower voter turnout, especially in cities during the recent two-phase voting on May 4 and 11 was a matter of concern.
He said steps would be taken to increase the voting percentage in future elections after diagnosing the causes for urban voters' apathy.
"We are planning a workshop on this important issue to take suggestions from various people and act accordingly. Apparently, the increasing mobility of urban voters may be an important reason for low voter turnout in cities," he said.
The average voting percentage in the civic polls this time was recorded to be 52.4 per cent, Kumar said.
He said that people showed a keen interest in the civic polls in the state by trying to know things related to the polls through the commission's website.
"As many as 32 lakh people visited the Commission's website four crore times during the poll period."