Common electoral roll: Electoral reform is welcome, but shouldn’t be selective

News: Recently, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021. The bill facilitates a wide array of electoral reform, of which several of them have been pending for over two decades. A common electoral roll can be the next reform the government should consider. In the recent meeting, the ECI also stressed the same.

What are the salient provisions of the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021?

-Extending the qualifying date for registration of young new voters.

About electoral rolls

The process for making electoral rolls is laid down in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. The primary unit of electoral rolls is the assembly election constituency.

Currently, separate electoral rolls are maintained for elections to the Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha and local government bodies. Since different elections are held at different times, these electoral rolls should be made every year and kept ready always.

The ECI conducts the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, and State Election Commissions (SECs) conduct panchayat and municipal elections. The SECs have the option of either adopting the electoral rolls created by the ECI or preparing such rolls on their own.

Most SEIs prefer to use the rolls prepared by the ECI. Some states, however, develop their rolls independently, For instance, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Why there is a need for a common electoral roll?

1. The officials responsible for making both these rolls are the same, so a common electoral roll will reduce manpower and cost 2. Considering that a voter for all three tiers of elected bodies is the same, s/he is missing her/his name from one of the rolls, especially the panchayat rolls, is unacceptable, 3. Reduce the workload of Teachers: A major chunk of making electoral rolls fall in the hands of school teachers, 4. The only difference between the PRI and Vidhan Sabha rolls is that the former has information about the ward in which the voter lives. So, this can be integrated.

What needs to be done to adopt a common electoral roll?

-The SECs derive their powers to supervise local body elections from Articles 243K and 243ZA of the Constitution. Hence, all state governments would have to change their electoral laws to adopt ECI electoral rolls for local elections.

-Pilot studies may be conducted in random constituencies to identify the discrepancies between two sets of rolls and their reasons.

Apart from electoral rolls, the government must consider the 40-plus pending proposals, instead of selectively going for politically motivated reforms like simultaneous elections and electoral bonds.

Source: This post is based on the article “Electoral reform is welcome, but shouldn’t be selective” published in Indian Express on 23^rd Dec 2021.