CEO Rajat Kumar announced that recently 2.48 lakh names were re-enrolled in the electoral polls. During the controversial National Electoral Roll Purification of 2015, 35 lakh names of voters were deleted, he said that after field-level verification, the names were re-enrolled while the deleted names were found to be either dead, duplicated or changed their addresses permanently.

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The Chief Electoral Officer, however, said that in the electoral list for the recent Assembly polls these names were not reflected. According to Mr. Kumar, by March 15 the State Election Commission received 6,68,858 applications for inclusion in the electoral rolls with the number of voters expected to cross three crores ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The Booth-level officers have been told to distribute election photo identity cards (EPIC), and voter slips for the electors by April 5.

In the event that the voters don't have EPIC, they can produce these identity documents - passport, driver's licence, identity cards with photograph issued by Central or state governments, PSUs, or public limited companies, bank passbooks with photograph, PAN card, smart card issued by RGI under NPR, MNREGA job card, official identity cards issued to MPs/MLAs/ MLCs, health insurance smart card issued by labour ministry, pension document with photograph, an Aadhaar card.

Up until now, the first level checks have been led in the greater part of the areas, barring Karimnagar, Siddipet, Vikarabad, Mahabubnagar, and Suryapet. Bharat Electronics Limited and ECIL have provided the ballot units(BU), control units(CU) and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails(VVPATs).

In regard to the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), Rajat Kumar said that the Election Commission is not utilizing the EVMs of the 14 assembly sections which were under legal cognizance during the recently finished up Assembly polls. He informed that poll staff has been coordinated to not open the VVPATs to sunlight directly adding that illegal assets worth Rs. 5 crore has been seized by the EC since the usage of the Model Code of Conduct.

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