Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer Navdeep Rinwa has made district election officers (DEOs) responsible for coordinating, supervising and ensuring the quality of all voter-list work in their districts.He said accountability would be fixed if officials found unnecessary delays, inactive user accounts, incomplete profiles, errors in electoral rolls or lapses in supervision.Rinwa said maintaining accurate and updated electoral rolls was fundamental to the democratic process. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 and Election Commission guidelines, the responsibility did not rest only with electoral registration officers (EROs) or subordinate officials. DEOs had the final administrative and supervisory responsibility, he said.He directed every DEO to log in to the ECI Net system daily using their own credentials and review voter-list work. They must check the profiles and last login details of deputy DEOs, EROs, assistant EROs, booth-level officer (BLO) supervisors and BLOs, including the accuracy of their names, mobile numbers, designations and photographs.DEOs must also review the receipt and disposal of Forms 6, 6A, 7 and 8 every day. Applications should not remain pending unnecessarily at any level. Cases concerning another district must be forwarded without delay, while applications assigned to the wrong ERO or assistant ERO should be reassigned promptly. Officials must not share login credentials, passwords or one-time passwords with anyone.Rinwa also ordered daily monitoring of complaints received through the National Grievance Service Portal and other channels. DEOs must hold weekly review meetings, examine the reasons for pending cases and sample-check complaint responses to ensure they are substantive and satisfactory.Under the “Book a Call with BLO” facility, no citizen’s call request should remain pending for more than 48 hours. Action should be taken against BLOs who fail to respond on time or mark a request “Contacted” or “Unavailable” without contacting the citizen.
