Port Blair, July 26: To bring the Transparency and Accountability in the Electoral process, ECI is constantly utilizing IT enabled solutions and bringing necessary enactments by amendment in Election Laws.

Ministry of Law & Justice has amended the Representation of the People Act, 1950 vide the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 dated 30th December, 2021. The amendments in the said Acts broadly cover the following aspects: -

(i) Use of Aaadhar for electoral registration purpose

(ii) Multiple qualifying dates

(iii) Gender neutral provision for Service and Special Electors and

(iv) Power to acquire premises for the purpose of conduct of elections

In accordance with the amendments, various existing electoral forms prescribed for inclusion, deletion, modification, shifting of names in the electoral roll have been amended and a new form 6B has been introduced for providing Aadhaar information for authentication of electors.

Further, ECI has launched Garuda App for digital mapping of the Polling stations, to ensure fast, smarter, transparent and timely completion of election work. Through Garuda App, the Booth Level Officer (BLO’s) will upload photo and location (Latitude / Longitude) informations of Polling stations and do field verifications from their mobile devices, thus ensuring paperless transaction.

In this connection, a training programme was arranged in the Conference Hall of DC Office, South Andaman for Master Trainers from all tehsils of Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Master Trainers will further impart training to all BLOs and other Election officials at their respective Tehsils.

The training was imparted by the State Level Master Trainers Shri Abdul Rasheed, Deputy Manager (IT)/AERO(HQ) and Shri Anwar Rasheed, Computer Asst. Gr. ‘A’ at conference hall of DC Office.