Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi at a seminar in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 11: The Election Commission (EC) has in principle agreed to step into the realm of social networking and the move coincides with the inclusion of nearly 20 million youths in the new voters’ list to be published later this month.

While the EC is yet to set a date for its Facebook launch, the young citizens will be given identity cards on January 25, which is National Voters’ Day. President Pratibha Singh Patil will formally launch the distribution of cards, which will be made available at 8,00,000 booths across the country.

Chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said: “At present, the youth constituted 30 to 35 per cent of the total number of voters. We will undertake an awareness campaign to encourage their participation in the electoral process.”

He said students of the Calcutta-based West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences had suggested that the commission should use Facebook to stay in touch with the youth. In fact, they had volunteered to maintain the account. “In principle, we have agreed to the suggestion,” Quraishi said.

Quraishi and two other election commissioners, V.S. Sampath and Harishankar Brahma, and EC director-general of Akshya Rout were here to attend a symposium of electoral officers of eastern states. The symposium is a part of the commission’s diamond jubilee celebrations.

The chief election commissioner said the commission was successful in checking the flow of black money during the recently held Bihar Assembly elections by adhering to the new guidelines. “We had set up an election expenditure monitoring division in the commission which was in constant touch with income tax authorities. During the Bihar polls, we came across “paid news” being carried in different newspapers. We have issued notices to 86 people in this regard,” he said.

Sampath said: “During the symposium, the commission had received many interesting inputs to improve electoral practices in the country.” He praised the efforts of the Kandhamal district collector’s initiative to arrange voting for the 25,000 displaced persons who were riot victims and the Malkangiri superintendent of police for monitoring vehicular moment through GIS (Geographic Information System).

In Ganjam, he said, the collector had used a software to tabulate the vehicular movement in the district. By using the software, the authorities could keep an effective check on use of vehicles by parties.