Bihar told to speed up issuing voter cards

A three-member team of the Election Commission (EC) visiting Bihar Monday asked officials to speed up the process of issuing voter identity cards ahead of the assembly polls in October-November this year, official sources said.
The team headed by Election Commissioner S.Y. Qureshi discussed the election preparedness with government officials here, sources said.
“The EC team reviewed election preparedness with divisional commissioners and district magistrates and the progress on voter identity cards,” a source said.
The EC has already instructed the state officials to issue voter cards to at least 85 percent of the voters. The final list of electoral roll is to be published June 15, sources said.
According to official figures, there are 54,324,000 eligible voters in Bihar but only 40,171,917 have photo identity cards.