Ahmedabad admn introduces e-payment for election officials

In order to bring transparency and to overcome logistical and security issues, the Ahmedabad district administration will replace the traditional system of manual remuneration to officials on election duty with electronic payment.

Nearly Rs 4 crore will be disbursed to over 35,000 poll staffers in the district. And for this, a private bank has been roped in, which has offered to provide its services free of cost to the Election Commission.

The unique identification numbers provided to officials on poll duty will be supplemented with information, including bank account numbers along with their mobile phone numbers. Thus, irrespective of the constituency where the staff is assigned the duty, the remuneration will be paid to their bank accounts in real time.

"The idea was mooted with the objective of unburdening the election staff and the collector office from unnecessary task of manning this huge amount of money to be transferred to each individual manually. This not only distracts the poll staff but also wastes a lot of time. Then, issues like transferring money to each booth along with its security had been also posing problems on the election day," said District Election Officer Vijay Nehra.

From returning officers to booth staffers at 21 constituencies in the district need not have accounts in a particular bank. Their account numbers, irrespective of bank, have been updated on the list with their unique identification numbers allotted to them for the elections. Once the money is transferred in their accounts, an SMS will be sent to them.

In the past, there had been reports of poll staffers complaining of either delay or irregularity in payments. Also, till the time they were paid, they were bound to be present at the respective sites where they were assigned duty.

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