Sunday, February 5 2006 11:13 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Faced with 'huge complaints' of stuffing of electoral rolls in West Bengal, a problem it had faced in Tamilnadu last year, the Election Commission (EC) is deploying high technology to tackle it even as it warned of 'very harsh' steps against false declarations to enter into the electoral rolls.

The EC has deployed an 'E-roll cleaning' package to cut down duplicate voters from the electoral rolls in five states where Assembly elections are to be held shortly.

'Roll and Poll' would be the watchword and the Commission hopes to fully utilise its 'e-roll cleaning' package to remove dead and shifted voters, known as 'duplicate voters', from the electoral rolls.

An in-house technology 'E-roll cleaning' was used on an experimental basis in the Bihar Assembly polls and the Commission is planning to replicate the experiment in these five states, Chief Election Commisioner, B. B. Tandon told sources in an interview.

"The Commission is making a very sincere and concerted effort to remove duplicate names from the rolls", Tandon said.

The exercise of inclusion and deletion of names would continue after the publication of final rolls till the last date of filing of nomination papers, he said.

Noting that 'huge complaints' had come from political parties on the 'stuffing' of electoral rolls in West Bengal, he said that 19 observers appointed by the Commission to look into the complaints would submit their reports to the EC on their return on February 10.