Monday, November 4, 2002		Feature

Indian voters’ list may go online

INDIA, which has more voters than the combined population of the USA and Russia, will put the names of all its 650 million electorate on the Internet.

This gigantic exercise will be completed before the next Parliamentary elections in 2004, Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthi said here.

"The aim of the Election Commission is to have the electoral rolls online with photographs and other details of voters," he told reporters.

The task had been assigned to a Pune-based documentation centre. The voters’ list would be available in English, Hindi and local languages.

Krishnamurthi added that along with this step, conducting elections with the help of electronic voting machines, rather than ballot boxes and ballot papers, would reduce the cost of holding polls considerably.

He said the Election Commission would require at least 800,000 electronic voting machines to hold a Parliamentary election. It has only 300,000 now.

Krishnamurthi was here to review arrangements for assembly polls in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh early next year.