File picture of chief electoral officer Mona Sharma

Bhubaneswar, March 28: Voters curious to find out details about candidates contesting elections are complaining that poll officials have failed to provide them the required information.

The chief electoral officer (CEO) of the state assured the voters that all information regarding candidates and poll process would be available on websites of the Election Commission of India and CEO-Odisha within 24 hours after they had filed their papers.

“I wanted to check the property, education and other details of Prasanna Kumar Patasani, the BJD candidate contesting from the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat, but it was not there. The website showed a page stating ‘Duplicate headers received from server’,” said Ansuman Pattanayk, a private company employee and political enthusiast.

Similarly, information regarding the candidates, contesting from Bhubaneswar north and central Assembly seats, were also not properly available till today evening though the final date for filing nomination in these seats was till 3pm on Wednesday.

Besides, information regarding the candidates in these two Assembly seats was to be uploaded by the office of additional district magistrate (ADM) that is located at a stone’s throw away from the CEO’s office.

Although the website showed the names of the candidates, when one clicks to check the details, some of them show ‘no records found’.

However, ADM Manoj Pattnaik was completely ignorant of this.

“We have uploaded the information on the website, there might be some problem,” said the Pattnaik.

However, an official said they were facing problems in uploading the data due to prescribed limit of uploading data on the website.

“We cannot upload all information, and some of the scanned copies of affidavit are exceeding the limit. So, we are facing problems here,” said an employee at the ADM’s office.

Internet users said that if problems pertaining to Internet or data upload had occurred in remote areas of the state, it could have been understood.

“But, the excuses officials here give, show how inefficient our government people are,” said Rudra Mohanty, an IT professional.

Nodal officer for elections at the CEO’s office Naba Nayak said the returning officers and district election officers had been instructed to upload the information on the website. “They would do it,” said Nayak.

Besides, there is very little data regarding this year’s election available for public on the CEO’s website.

In another development, there are also allegations that CEO’s officials, who have been entrusted with various duties, are not co-operating with the voters and refraining from providing information. “If someone asks them for information they keep on passing the buck,” said a social activist.