Nokho Nyekha Naga
2 Days -- 400+ Kms -- 4 Meetings -- One Message "Together We Can". Phek District Tour of the CEO and his entourage, including members of 'The Naga Blog - Clean Election Cell'. A brief update.
Nagaland stands high on corruption in the country. The Electoral Roll is highly inflated, to a point that a program to sweep the electoral roll in Nagaland had to be re-enforced (it was done last year, and the same has been in progress this year). In order to make sure that a better result is achieved, the State Election Department, led by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) himself, decided to tour the districts to educate the people as well as to check the anomalies. A few members of 'The Naga Blog' was kindly invited to join the tour.
Some key points from the Election Department:
• Phek District stands high on duplicate E-Rolls, electoral gender ratio, and the inclusion of voter cards of deceased individuals, which the district officials has been asked to check and report within one week.
• District officials to immediately report when the E-Roll of a village crosses 600 voters.
• District officials to collect and submit the membership figures of the churches (District wise and area wise) at the earliest.
• Physical Verification of the Electors once the electoral gender ratio crosses 960.
• Number of Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to be minimized, and their performances to be observed more stringently.
• Penalty to the absentee BLOs during the meetings.
• After the E-Roll purification drive, an audit shall be done, where anomalies shall be stringently checked and the responsible officials penalised.
Some key points focussed, on behalf of our forum:
• Nagaland is one of the smallest state in terms of area as well as population, but also ranks one of the highest in corruption.
• Time to get back to the basics of the election process, and begin relearning them.
• It's time we begin involving the youths as well, in the election process.
• Electoral Roll purification is the first step we need to take, to clean our election process.
Next District:
Mokokchung. Dates shall be notified once we receive the confirmation from the Election Department.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are the views of the individual and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of The Naga Blog.
