Wondering what EPIC is ...
It stands for Electors' Photo Identity Card. In an attempt to improve the accuracy of the electoral rolls and prevent electoral fraud, the Election Commission of India has pressed for the introduction of photo identity cards for voters. This is a massive task, and at present over 338 million (of the 670 million voters) have been provided. The Commission is providing ways and methods to deal with the problems with the issue of cards, and difficulties in keeping track of voters, especially the mobile urban electorate.
The commission has plans to make it mandatory to have EPIC for casting your vote. This will greatly reduce election malpractices such as rigging, bogus votes etc.
So, I decided to get my EPIC card since i heard abt it.
For this, first you need to be registered as a voter. i tried to include my name in the electoral list
since i m 18 yrs old. But until last year, i cudnt enroll myself as a voter in my native place.
Last year, i applied again for inclusion. but this time in hyderabad, for malakpet constituency.
I was lucky this time. I could see my name in the electoral rolls of malakpet constituency @ www.ceoandhra.nic.in.
Recently i happened to see a paper notice saying those whoever havent got their EPIC cards, can get the same by visiting thier respective polling centres. As i stay at Chaintanya Nagar(B N Reddy), as included in the electoral records, i had to goto the polling center @ Major padmapani achraya community hall,Hasthinapur. i was able to get the phone no of the incharge for this center.
When i called him, he informed me that he is incharge of kukatpally divison ... also, the paper ad contained a wrong number. But fortunately, when i called up another phone no given in the same paper ad, he is kind enough to provide me all the information i hav asked for, even though he is not incharge of that polling center.
Armed with this, i went to the polling center @ 9 am ... i forgot tht govt officials come to the office @11am,
As a norm, i count find any offical there... But many ppl are waiting outside the hall... When enquired, i found that the officials wud usually come @ around 10 30 am, i had no other way to go back and come again...
This time i came @ 10 40, still ppl r waiting like before ... After further enquiry, i found that these ppl r waiting for Ration cards ... EPIC cards are given in a room at the back of the main building ... When we went there we could find two persons working on their comps ... going through the Amazing software provided by APTS for EPIC issue. i happened to hav a luk at the software dvpd by APTS ... for the worse, it doesnt have any search capabilites ... All they can do is enter the serial no(in every polling station, there will be abt 1000 voters. each voter under this polling station is given a serial no)
he tried to find out my serial no using the software but to no avail.
I got to know few more things:
these ppl can only issue the cards with the data as feeded in the database.
Even though your name may be spelt wrongly, but you cant do much. It may so happen that your father name might be swapped with someone else's. Dont worry. you will get time to correct this mistakes.
but not now.
All you can do is take the card with wrong data. if you want to get it corrected, they will issue a one more paper notice but this time only for corrections in EPIC cards.
why it happens like this is anybody's guess ???
So absurd is the process ... But you cant do much.
Also the ppl who have designed this software cant do better job than this.
And as evryone knows, the cream of the software industry works for the elite MNCs.
But i did one good thing... noted down the polling stn no ...
i came to the office @ 12 30 pm and searched for my name in tht polling station data ...
I FOUND my NAME in that polling station data.
Now i just need to quote my serial no in the polling station(Sl. no. 701) to get my EPIC ...
(to be continued)
Hoping to get my epic card this sat'day ...i.e on 24th feb 07 :)
