Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy on Sunday favoured issuance of a Unique Identity Card for every citizen in the country to check the problem of duplicacy of names in the voters list, which was a big problem.

Gopalaswamy, who was here to take part in a seminar on electoral and political process reforms, said at the time of 2004 Parliamentary elections there were over three crore excess names in the voters list.

“According to the population figures in 2004, there should have been 64 crore people above 18 years in the country. But actually there were 67 crore names in the voters list,” he said.

Maintaining that every year the voters list changes by about 10 per cent, Gopalaswamy said about one per cent people die while one to two per cent new names are incorporated and about six to seven per cent voters shift their residences.

He said during the recent assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh as many as 85 lakh voters had enrolled their names at more than one places which comes to about 7.5 per cent of the total electorate.

In some constituencies, there were about 40,000 to 50,000 absentee voters and the winning margins were less than 5,000, Gopalaswamy said.

“To prepare a list of the absentee voters and keep a watch on them is a very difficult job,” he said.

Gopalaswami suggested that a multi-purpose national identity card would go a long way in checking the problem as it would ensure that the voter has one number wherever he gets registered.

Gopalaswamy said the plan had been initiated as a pilot project in some places.

He said the Election Commission planned to prepare electoral list with the photos by 2009 so that a voter could exercise his franchise in case his photo identity card is lost.

While conceding that electoral reforms were essential, Gopalaswamy said it was a difficult job as it required the necessary will on the part of the political parties.

Gopalaswamy said in some countries security personnel were not deployed at polling centres and they were manned by the volunteers.

“Let us hope that the same situation will come in our country as well when citizen volunteers will man the polling centres,” he said in reply to a question on the deployment of central paramilitary forces during polling.