It will be a time-consuming and daunting task for the Office of Chief Electoral Officer. The day it heaved a sigh of relief after having prepared the draft electoral rolls, it has to get mentally ready for redrawing the rolls as per the new delimitation.

Chief Electoral Officer R Ramaseshan did not comment on the mammoth work his office had to take up in the wake of the Union Cabinet deciding to implement the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission.
He said,  “Today we have put the draft rolls for the public scrutiny. We will wait for the election commission’s direction”.
But official sources said the process to re-draw the assembly constituencies needs a minimum six months’ time or even more. Nobody in the Office of the State Electoral Officer (OSEO), actually has any knowledge or experience of re-drawing the boundaries and re-set the present voters’ list.

The last delimitation was implemented in 1976 in the State. Sources said that the OSEO has drawn up a rough calender for delimitation process. It requires six to eight months’ time to implement which means the State Assembly elections will not be held before September 2008.

 “Not many officials who were involved in the 1976 delimitation process would still be in service now. It will be a new experience for those who will be involved in it. Every step and every decision is a new experience and experiment during the process,” officials says.

Work involved

“The OSEO has to identify the geographical boundaries of new constituencies, prepare a new voters’ list for the newly-drawn constituencies and re-number all polling booths and constituencies. All these have to be done as per the procedure,” officials explained.

The toughest task, according to officials, is identification of geographical boundaries, based on the revenue department’s maps.

Minor mistake

It has to be done meticulously as even a minor mistake will result in thousands of voters living in a place losing their right to exercise their franchise.

After carving out new constituencies, the existing voters’ list has to be made applicable, both in terms of numbers and jurisdictions. However, the base voters’ list will remain the same.

The most time-consuming is the procedure to be followed to give the new constituencies and the new voters’ list a legal sanctity.

Several orders need to be issued during the process for re-numbering and re-naming constituencies and others. Draft rolls need to be published and public should be allowed to file their objections, if they have any, officials said.