Cadres of political parties have begun distributing voting slips door to door since the weekend. These slips carry your name, address and number on the electoral rolls and your photo too, if that has been updated. The slip helps you and the booth staff easily locate your name on the rolls on polling day – April 24, Thursday – and quicken the process.
The slip also confirms that your name in on the rolls and that you can confidently walk to the booth, sign in and cast your vote.
If you do not have a Voter ID card, then any valid ID like passport, Aaadhar card which carries your name, address and photo is sufficient.
In many booths, Corporation has also put up display boards which list the streets/roads/colonies whose residents can cast their ballot at the venue. This helps because in some areas there may be two booths on one one campus or booths close to each other.
If your slip has not been delivered it means your name is not on the list or the address is mixed up and hence the slip may be given elsewhere or dropped off. You can still walk to the cadres’ desk outside the local booth on voting day and look for your name which may be listed elsewhere.
A Software Powerhouse ?
Yesterday , when I went to polling booth , there was a chaos , with a number of people complaining that their names were missing from the Electoral Rolls ( Voter Lists )
As per news-reports , in Mumbai alone , some 50,000 people returned home without casting their votes – including Deepak Parekh ! Altogether , names of some 15 lakh voters ( out of a total of 98 lakh ) were missing !
Then there are some 300 million people who will simply won’t walk down to the nearest polling booths , and wait for 1 hour to cast their votes ( – assuming that some 40 % of the 814 million eligible voters do not exercise their right to vote )
WHY ?
Going out to vote is becoming a big hassle
COULD IT BE OTHERWISE ?
Sure , if Central Government and the Election Commission care to implement my suggestion for developing a mobile App for voting . I called it , VotesApp
see .. hemenparekh.in/2013/08/votesapp.html
Or , just type in Google , ” VotesApp ”
HOW WILL IT HELP ?
> No need for 930,000 polling booths / EVMs / Ink / Papers etc
Every voter’s own mobile becomes a miniature EVM !
Any registered Voter can vote from anywhere in the World !
> Nor any need to deploy 1,100,000 people to conduct the polls
> No need for millions of Police / Military personnel
> No need for months of advance preparations, across entire country
> Voting can be completed in just ONE day – instead of over 6 weeks –
and results can be declared next day !
> Voting could be 95 % or more !
> No worry for booth-capture
> No bogus voting ( Bio-metric ID from built-in camera )
> No duplicate voting ( Self-destruct after single usage )
> No worry for any terrorist attacks
> Enormous saving of time for Voters
> No need to declare a public holiday – costing thousands of crores
worth of production
> Central Government will save, at least , Rs 2,000 Crores .
If business-friendly BJP government comes to power , it would not
hesitate to earn Rs 20,000 crores , by enabling 15 million Indian
businesses to advertise to 814 million voters , thru this mobile VotesApp –
sharply targeting by Gender / Age / Marital Status / City / Street /
Education / Income Tax paid / Employed or Jobless ..etc
> No need for Central Government to stop taking even routine decisions
If a tiny country like Estonia ( population 1.6 million ) can elect its Members of Parliament thru a VotesApp type mobile App , why can’t we ?
Already 900+ million Indians have mobiles – all of which , will soon become Smart Phones
And we call our country , a ” Software Powerhouse ” !
* hemen parekh ( 25 April 2014 / Mumbai )