With just two weeks to go for the assembly polls, the election officials face a daunting task. Of the 78 per cent voter’s identity cards that the Election Commission had promised to issue in the 21 constituencies of the district, around 30 per cent have errors on them, mostly printing mistakes.

If some of them possessed wrong addresses and names, others came with wrong photographs. The voters ID card or the Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC), the identity proof of the voter, is a must for voting. “We agree that a large number of cards are having some problem or the other. We had at the start of the month corrected 40,000 cards. The remaining will soon be addressed by the respective electoral officer,” a senior election officer said.

The officer admitted that it would be a lengthy process for these voters. “Those having problems with their I-cards will have to fill Form 8 and then get it corrected.”

The voters are also exasperated with the procedure. Sushma Sheth has got her EPIC card with a wrong photo and even wrong address, while her son Makrand’s name is spelt as Makar. “We faced several problems in the Lok Sabha polls. Now even though we had submitted the photos for the photo ID drive sufficiently early, the same problems have surfaced again,” she said.

NIBM resident Sushil Kumar has his name printed as SP Nair Sushil Kumar while his wife’s name is registered as Usha Kumar Shinde. “We don’t know when we will get the corrected EPIC card,” he said.

... contd.