Elections are coming and the Election Commission of India is working hard on getting voter ID card to all the voters. It’s a new system in India that all the voters should have a voter id card otherwise they will not be able to vote. The government always says that they will block any person who doesn’t have a voter ID card but every year two three days before elections news comes from the Election Commission of India saying that anyone can participate in the elections, even those who don’t have a voter ID card because Election Commission of India was not able to reach everyone.
The government has been spending a huge amount of money on this project but they were never ever successful. The funniest thing is that almost 50% of the voter ID cards have wrong information or some kind of misprinting. I often hear about these things but today I heard about a huge mistake that a human should not do. Amar Ujala, the leading Hindi newspaper of India, has published an article today (08/04/09) saying that the Election Commission of India has issued a voter ID card for someone named Ballu who lives in Muradabad and his age is mentioned as 822 year old.
He went to the Election Commission of India office but they did not have any answer and since elections are not more than 10 days away from now, Ballu will not lose his time by going to the office again and again to get a new voter ID card. He will use the same card and vote as a 822 year-old person. In the same way they have issued voter ID cards to Nanhi and Khurseed where they are mentioned as only two years old. They will also do the same thing- vote as a two-year-old girl. Their third mistake is that they have issued 424 voter ID cards on only one address, which means according to the Election Commission of India there are 424 people from the same family and same house.
When I got my first voter ID card, I still remember that my father’s name was printed on my card and the address was also wrong. I went to them to complain about it and they asked me to come back before a month of next elections, after five years, when they will start working again on this project. Even though the voter ID cards are issued by the government of India, they are not recognized as a residential or personal identity proof by any institution in India, whether government or private, only because of these terrible mistakes. The newspaper Times of India had published an article on the 24th of March about the same kind of mistake done by the Election Commission of India where they had issued a voter ID card to a twelve year old girl.
The Indian government is not smart enough to deal with issuing better voter ID cards but just to show off they are going to built nuclear power plants. With voter ID cards they are just supposed to collect good quality datas and print them on paper, and they can’t even do that propely. How will they deal with such a huge project like nuclear power plants??? I always wonder if India is ready for this kind of project where there is no margin for error or if our government is smart enough to deal with nuclear waste or nuclear power??? After looking at these kinds of mistakes, it doesn’t seem so to me, though.