New Delhi (PTI): The Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday said voter identity cards will now be delivered to electors within 15 days, virtually halving the time taken.

Till now, it took a little over a month for the Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC) to be delivered to the voters, officials pointed out.

The EC said a new standard operating procedure (SOP) has been introduced to ensure that voter cards are delivered within 15 days of new enrolment of an elector or change in particulars of an existing voter.

The new system will ensure real-time tracking of each stage right from the EPIC generation by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) till the delivery of the card to the elector through the Department of Posts (DoP), the poll authority said.

The electors will also receive notifications via SMS at each stage, keeping them informed about the status of their EPIC, it noted.

For this purpose, the EC has introduced a dedicated IT module on its recently launched ECINet platform.

The new IT platform will replace the existing process by re-engineering the current system and streamlining the workflow.

The DoP's Application Programme Interface (API) will be integrated with the ECINet for seamless delivery, the EC said.

This initiative aims to enhance service delivery while maintaining data security. In the past four months, the Commission has taken various initiatives for the benefit of electors and other stakeholders.

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New Delhi(PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday criticised the government’s move to ban online money gaming, warning that such a step would only push the industry underground and strengthen criminal networks.

He also said he had not studied the three Constitution amendment bills seeking to provide a framework for the removal of prime ministers, Union ministers, chief ministers and state ministers detained on serious criminal charges in any detail.

“On the face of it, it is difficult to say it has any problem, but obviously if anyone does something wrong they should not be a minister anyway. I don’t know if there is any other motive,” he remarked.

Discussing the bill seeking to prohibit and regulate online gaming introduced in the Lok Sabha, he said, "I had written a very long article on the argument that by banning online gaming we are simply driving it underground, whereas it could be a useful source of revenue for the government if we legalise it, regulate it and tax it."

He added that many countries have studied the issue in detail and concluded that regulation and taxation can generate funds for social causes, while bans merely enrich “criminal mafias”.

In a post on X, Tharoor recalled that he had “gone on record in 2018 urging the government to legalise, regulate and tax online gaming, rather than drive it underground by banning it, which will merely enhance the profits of the mafia”.

“It’s a pity that the government seems to have derived no lessons from the experience of other countries that have considered this issue,” he wrote.

He added that the bill should at least have been referred to a parliamentary committee “to consider all the pros and cons before rushing it into law”.

The proposed bill prohibits online money gaming and its advertisements, prescribing imprisonment or fines, or both, for violators. It differentiates such games from eSports and online social games, while calling for their promotion.