'Voters' lists must be error-free'

BANGALORE: The Election Commission on Wednesday said it would not announce election dates in Karnataka until the draft voters’ list was error-free.
Chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami and election commissioners Naveen Chawla and S Y Quraishi, who reviewed the arrangements for the polls and progress on updation of electoral rolls at a meeting with state government officials at Vidhana Soudha, expressed their displeasure over the glitches in the electoral rolls.They have set February 7 as the deadline for the discrepancies to be rectified. According to the schedule, the final publication of the electoral rolls, with January 1, 2008 as the qualifying date, was to be published on Thursday.
“If the voters lists are perfect, 80 per cent of the election battle is over,” Gopalaswami is reported to have said in the meeting. Besides, the adverse report submitted by the CEOs who were deputed to oversee the preparation of the electoral rolls, deputy election commissioner R Bhattacharya, who was here recently is also reported to have highlighted the largescale discrepancies in the voters’ list.