High time NRIs empowered to vote from their locations: Outgoing CEC Rajiv Kumar
New Delhi, Feb 17 (PTI): Outgoing Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Monday stressed the need to have a totaliser system to ensure confidentiality in polling station-wise voting patterns and said it is high time that NRIs are empowered to vote from their locations.
In his farewell address ahead of his retirement on attaining the age of 65 years, he also said consensus for remote voting mechanisms is must to facilitate crores of migrant voters.
Biometric authentication at polling booths should be tried to efficiently tackle impersonation of voters, Kumar, who demits office on February 18, said.
He said online reporting of political party expenditures has begun and must be made mandatory for better financial transparency and analytics.
On political promises, he said these must be backed by financial disclosures and courts need to facilitate early decision.
Unregulated social media algorithms pose a serious risk to elections worldwide and must be addressed urgently, Kumar underlined and asserted that election management bodies need to develop capacity to counter mischievous, baseless and strategically timed criticism.
Casting doubt on outcomes after active and full participation in the process is undesirable, the outgoing head of the poll authority lamented.
"Technology has been a powerful enabler in our electoral processes, helping refine voter rolls, streamline operations, and engage citizens more effectively," he said.
The EC, he said, has been at the forefront in "adopting technology in our electoral operations".
"However, innovations like biometric authentication may further help prevent impersonation and multiple voting, ensuring that every vote belongs to the rightful voter," he said.
Presently in the system of counting of votes, the result is retrieved from each EVM, then the votes polled in respect of each candidate is totalled and result is declared. The demerit of this system of counting is that the candidates can know from where they have received how much vote. This leads to the problem of post-election violence, victimisation and exclusion of the supporters of opposition parties from developmental activities.
To address this, Kumar said, technologies like the totaliser, already developed by the Commission, would ensure that the votes secured by each candidate- polling station wise is not disclosed.
"I believe that this matter should be explored, political consensus attempted and tested on a pilot basis to enhance voter secrecy and protect the integrity of the electoral process," the outgoing CEC said.
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UP man gets life term for electrocuting mentally challenged wife to death in Bareilly
Bareilly (UP) (PTI): A local court here has sentenced a man to life imprisonment for murdering his mentally challenged wife by repeatedly electrocuting her while she was tied to a cot, lawyers said on Thursday.
Additional district government counsel Harendra Singh Rathore said Additional Sessions Judge Avinash Kumar Singh on Wednesday convicted Vinod Kumar (45) for killing his wife, Satyavati, in Chaina village of Bareilly district and imposed a fine of Rs 15,000 on him.
According to the prosecution, he was allegedly frustrated with his wife Satyavati's mental illness and often assaulted her.
Rathore said the prosecution examined nine witnesses to establish the charges against him.
As per court records, on the night of May 1-2, 2022, when Satyavati was asleep, Vinod tied her hands and legs to a cot using ropes and then connected an aluminium cable to an electric board to repeatedly administer electric shocks to her.
"She writhed in pain, but the accused continued to electrocute her until she died," the prosecution said.
The court observed that the murder was carried out in an inhuman manner.
After committing the crime, the accused threw the rope and cable on the roof and left for work at a brick kiln around 2 am to create a false alibi.
He later tried to mislead the police and the victim's family by claiming that Satyavati, whose mental condition was unstable, had accidentally died by suicide after grabbing a live electric wire.
However, the victim's brother, Sanjeev, a resident of Shahjahanpur district, suspected foul play and lodged an FIR under sections 498A (husband subjecting wife to cruelty) and 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code at Nawabganj police station.
During the trial, the prosecution relied on the post-mortem report prepared by Dr Faraz Anwar, who stated that multiple electrocution marks found on different parts of the victim's body could not have been self-inflicted.
The police also recovered the rope and electric wire used in the crime on the accused's identification, officials said.
