KATHMANDU, Oct 23: About 9.6 million voters in 67 districts have been registered in the new electoral roll compiled by the Election Commission (EC) with voters´ photographs and biometrics. The EC plans to complete the voter registration in the remaining eight districts by the end of November.
Immediately after completion of the registration process in all 75 districts, the commission will commence data clearing. [break]
Under the data clearing program, enumerators will reach all municipalities and village development committees (VDCs) in all the districts to cross-verify the collected data. They will present the collected data before the voters and ask them to make corrections if there are any duplications, errors and fake documents among the collected data," said Officiating Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety.
During the data clearing campaign, the EC will also request those who were absent during the first phase of registration to get themselves included in the new electoral roll.
Photos and biometrics of all voters registered in the new electoral roll have been electronically stored in computers along with their personal details.
The electronically registered electoral roll with photos, finger prints and biometrics is expected to be more authentic and credible for purposes of future elections.
The EC was able to register the 9.6 million eligible Nepalis (aged 18 years or above) over a period of one year.
According to the data, out of the total of 3,915 VDCs in the country, the EC has already completed the registration process in 3,726 VDCs. Enumerators are currently busy registering voters in the remaining 189 VDCs.
Unlike in the past, personal details with photos and fingerprints were collected from individual voters. The enumerators met the voters, invited them to the registration centers, took their photos via laptop and recorded their fingerprints with the use of electoral devices.
In past voter registrations, only the names and addresses were collected while compiling the voter list.
"We hope that the number of voters will increase significantly once we launch the data clearing campaign after conducting the registration process in all 75 districts," Uprety said. He further said that the EC is encouraged by the new electoral roll compiled so far. The EC expects to register about 11 million voters this time round.
During the CA election, the total number of voters was 17.6 million.
According to Uprety, participation by members of the intelligentsia including government officials, lawyers, journalists, scholars and students was very low in the new voter registration process.
Of the 58 municipalities in the country, the EC has accomplished its registration drive in 53. Out of the total of about 9.44 million on whom data was collected, more than 7.91 million were registered in 3,726 VDCs and over 1.36 million were registered in 53 municipalities.
Likewise, the EC registered 153,481 voters outside their native districts. That means there are 153,481 temporarily migrant voters.
The new voter registration process with photos and biometrics was made possible only after the Supreme Court issued a verdict paving the way for the EC to conduct the process on the basis of citizenship certificates alone. Initially, the Madhes-based parties had protested the EC´s program, saying the citizenship problem still remained in the Tarai region.
The EC has deployed nearly 91,000 enumerators armed with 3,000 laptops, an equal number of web cameras, finger print scanners, keyboards and 800 generators to carry out the registration.