Bogus voters on EC radar

Hyderabad, Jan. 6: Since, there are over 70 lakh �repeated voters� in the state electoral list, the state election commission had decided to appoint booth level officers (BLO) at each polling booth to detect and delete excess voters.� These BLOs will collect information with regard to the electoral rolls corresponding to the polling station and check the veracity of that list. The commission will hire the services of postmen, village administrative officers and teachers to act as BLOs.� The EC even decided to use the services of retired teachers where government employees are not available.� They will be given a fixed remuneration. Apart from this, the EC will hold meetings with political parties at each polling booth and seek their objections in order to spot the errors in the list. The chief electoral officer, Mr I.V. Subba Rao, on Tuesday said, �We have already conducted these meetings twice. We are also planning to hold some more meetings to minimise the errors.� The EC has also decided to appoint �micro-level observers� at sensitive polling booths at the time of polling to check bogus voters.� �We had appointed these observers on an experimental basis during the by-polls and got good results. So we are going to introduce this mechanism across the state during the upcoming polls,� said Mr Rao.