EC/ SEC - symbol of incompetence, incapacity, apathy, lack of accountability, all put together

The plight of many other common voters across the city is worse. A late father-in-law is shown as husband, more than 50 voters are aged 150 years, some even 0 and below 18 years. A deeper search will elicit that one Shankar from Okalipuram (ward 96, Gandhinagar assembly) is 655 years old! A ‘Thayamma’ under ‘Other’s name’ lives at house number 271, which has at least 33 voters. These are just a few other surprises on the list.

What went wrong? - We are looking into the real reasons for this error as the hard copies available with us are all correct.

For the full report in the TOI, click here.

The question should be 'what is wrong' - not 'what went wrong'. And, the answer is 'everything'. The present team is just not capable of doing a proper job; just restructure the entire set up, with the job of preparing and maintaining the voters' lists across the country outsourced to professional private players.

@ Naveen - The voter list is the key element in the democratic governance of the country. There can be no cost higher than when it is inaccurate, particularly to the extent that it is currently (over 50% even by EC's own admission). This is one area where the government cannot be allowed to cut corners any more.

 

The need of the hour is to increase the voter percentage. We have to reform the electoral system completely. We can't function with a 19th century system. How is it that our banking system works so well while we consistently fail to prepare the voters' list. There has to be some effective reforms. It seems efforts have not been put in this area for a long time - Ramesh Ramanathan, co-founder, Janaagraha in today's TOI

Finally, the real problem is now slowly gaining attention - well, never too late.
 

I myself have been a witness to blunders in the voters’ list in the last three elections. It’s time the State Election Commission (SEC) outsourced the voters’ list updation to an agency. This will also help fix accountability. We are writing to the SEC about this - Law Minister, S Suresh Kumar, quoted in today's TOI. For the full report, click here

However, it better be to some reputed agencies like TCS, as the Passport department has done, and not to some riff-raff like the SEC has engaged for issuing the EPICs.
 

My name has been changed to Narasinhaman N, worse I am described as the father of Kalyani, my wife of four decades. I feel therefore uncomfortable when I look at her! While “Gautham N” and “Gowrang N” are my sons, the Electoral Rolls have given me two more sons, since Balakrishna Mohite, 62, and just 8 years younger to me, is shown in English also as “Gauthama N” and me as his father! Mohite’s wife Rohini in English, becomes my youngest son “Gauranga N” and I become my own son’s “husband”! I have no plans of emulating the 74-year-young Brit Gerry Burks, blessed with his second child on March 12, 2010.

Imagine the dimensions of the mess in the whole electoral rolls! Does C.R. Chikkamath, the State Election Commissioner mean “weed in bloomers” when he says “weed out”? What is the game? As I came out from the polling booth, grumbled one voter . “We elect the next one to plunder us!” May would endorse his grouse.

A respected industry leader remarked recently “I suppose it must be in our genes….” referring to our penchant to compromise with mediocrity.

Let us attack the source that has been causing this mess-- our flawed electoral system.

For the full text in the New Indian Express, click here

The cabinet on Thursday approved a Rs.1,011 crore e-project to streamline and integrate the visa, immigration and foreigners registration and tracking process and enable information sharing across the concerned agencies. The National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) had been tasked with the responsibility for generating a comprehensive e-governance solution for the immigration, visa issuance and foreigners' registration and tracking functions, and to prepare a detailed project report for the same. For the full report in the TOI, click here.

So, even as visit to the country (and outside the country) is being further facilitated, and quite rightfully so, people living here have to continue to make do with the archaic electoral system. How ironical and iniquitous!

I had been wondering as to what kind of a progress Janaagraha's exercise, described above, had made. And, then I chanced to see this comment by a person who had initially volunteered to join the exercise:

As you might be knowing, Janaagraha has been working in Shantinagar for past few months, trying to clean up the electoral rolls. I was called by them a month ago to volunteer. I went and met the program coordinator U and also went to one of their Area Voter Mithra training session in Richmond Road.

They wanted me to work on few part numbers and co-ordinate about 20 AVMs in the Vannarapet area. I was only interested in joining someone in door2door campaign but reluctantly accepted the work. I have just been pathetic. Other than sending out a text message to AVMs offering to accompany them for door2door (to which no one responded), I have done nothing :-) I think they have given up on me now!

Janaagraha is attempting something which is atleast 100 times tougher than what Smartvote did in Koramangala 151. They are handling Forms 6, 7, 8, 8A and some more paperwork! That too in an entire assembly constituency. The people who come to become AVMs are locals, many may be committed, but I'm not sure they have any experience in what they are doing. The training itself is pathetic. Other than A and another volunteer I met, Janaagraha's paid workers do the presentations, hand out heavy bags of printed material, maps and forms. If I had taken such a bag home, I would have no clue what to with it.

Now, this is a campaign which Janaagraha is doing with the Election Commission. Unless they pull off a miracle, or I'm gullible about what goes for "success" in NGOs, I think this campaign is gonna end in disaster. But I don't think I'm in a position to go and volunteer with them now.

If any of you is interested in working on our "core competency", electoral rolls, and are not already helping Janaagraha, please do go now. I know many of you are working on the PDS project and that seems a mammoth task in itself. But I think Janaagraha's potential failure in Shantinagar will get us cold shoulders in our future attempts to work with the Election Commission.

I had myself commented that "I would like to believe this is actually happening, because similar initiatives pursued earlier didn't make much headway". Apparently, this exercise also can't be expected to make much headway. The only answer appears to be to handover the job to professional organisations like TCS, quite like the Passport Dept has successfully done (check this)
 

Within two months, “Karnataka will become the first state in the country to go online. With this, application for correction of name and age, and for addition and deletion of names from the list, can also be made online,” Karnataka’s joint chief electoral officer T Shamaiah told STOI. Microsoft Corp and Tata Consultancy Services have provided technical support to the project.

Names are a big issue in Bangalore, say election staff. “EPIC has to be in two languages. Mistakes occur when a name written in English is transcribed to Kannada, or viceversa. Bangalore has migrants, and their names are tricky to be written in two languages” Shamaiah said.

For the full report in the ToI, click here.

The voter lists have to be integrated across the country, particularly considering the high levels of job related migration in today's world. For this, the master lists in all states need necessarily to be in English. I expect the professional players on the job (unlike here) have taken cognisance of the matter and have come up with solutions that will allow for a much higher level of accuracy of the lists than obtaining presently.

Nisar Ahmed is one among lakhs of voters who has a faulty Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC), which has either mistakes in the name or sex or photograph. Nisar was issued the card 10 days ago after BBMP conducted a doorto-door campaign.
    
In the BBMP election that was held last year, Bangalore witnessed just 44% turnout where city’s 198 corporators were elected. Many voters could not vote as their names were either missing in the voters’ list at the election booths (despite having the EPIC) or names misspelt or photos mismatched in the list.
    
After the public fury and media criticism, Election Commission of India (ECI) took up the initiative to clean the voters’ list and BBMP officials made a door-to-door survey recently. Nisar was one among the many who had applied afresh during this drive, but has been given a faulty identity card once again. “I will now have to apply to get the mistakes rectified. But who do I ask? The same officials might make similar mistakes once again. Meanwhile, I will apply for Aadhaar-UID number for address-proof. Many in my locality have similar problems with the newly issued EPIC,” says Nisar.
    
Janaagraha, a city-based NGO, has signed a three-year MoU with ECI to clean up the list and bring about electoral reforms. It says that in Shanthi Nagar assembly constituency, where the project has been taken up, Volunteers (Area Voter Mitra), found that over 20,000 names had mistakes in the card and 40,000 names were of persons not living in the constituency.

For the full report in the ToI, click here

This very clearly shows that the basics have still not been put in place. And, without that, what purpose does any MOU or whatever serve? NGO's jumping into the frey, in areas where they don't have the capacity, is far too often diverting from the main objective of arriving at the right kind of solutions.

A proper analysis of the so-called poor turn out at the past Corporation elections, very clearly pointed out to the abysmally faulty electoral rolls, partly leading to the likes of Katta Jagdish (now in jail) getting elected. The way things are it is perhaps going to take a lot more time before we can hope to be represented by cleaner people.

It's time the Civil Society joined together to demand handing over the preparation and maintenance of the electoral rolls (now incorporating even the UID) to professional organisations, like say TCS, quite like the Law Minister, Mr Suresh Kumar, had stated long back (check this).

The election identity cards have entries in both Kannada and English. "Baraha" is the software programmed to the EPIC drive in Karnataka. Officials have been finding technical errors which have not been addressed by the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka, despite the issue being brought to their notice. "If we type in Kannada, everything will be fine on the desktop and when we take printouts, errors will be seen. For example, if we type Inayatulla in Baraha, after taking the printouts, we see the word as Ainayatulla. The typographical errors have been occurring and we do not know how to fix them. If we key in 'I', what appears is 'Ai'. We will get to know this only after taking printouts," said an election staff member in BBMP.

For the full report in the ToI, click here.

That there was a serious issue with the trans-literation has been evident right from the very beginning. What is shocking is that none of the three agencies involved, namely CEO, NIC and BBMP, has bothered to address it so far. And, neither has Janaagraha, who have instead been undertaking laborious clean up of the voter list of one ward, under an MOU with the CEO for years together, for it to get mucked up all over again, each time a fresh entry is made.

Very clearly, besides, how can "Transposition of Entry in Electoral Rolls" (via form -18A) across states ever work when the master voter lists in each of the states are maintained in their respective languages?

With such incompetency at the very first stage of the democratic process, how can we ever expect to get better quality of people to represent us? What a crying shame? How can we have any pride in calling ourselves a democracy?

VS Sampath, Election Commissioner of India, said it’s the enrollment of youth that’s causing anxiety to the Election Commission. “Only 25% of young voters in the age group of 18 and 19 years were enrolled last year. That’s why we started a special drive in educational institutions during National Voters’ Day. In most states, it has now become 50%. In Himachal Pradesh, it’s 90% and in Karnataka, it’s 85%. But it should become 100%,” said Sampath.

CS Suranjana, CEC, Karnataka, said people should cooperate with booth-level officers during the special drive of revising the electoral rolls. “For those techies and others who may not find time to register themselves on week days, we’ll organize a new initiative called ‘Meet the Voter’ programme every Sunday in each ward. Bangalore being the IT capital must have 100% fault-free voters’ list,” he said.

For the full report in the ToI, click here.

How can we have a fault-free list without attending to this critical trans-literation issue? It's shocking that such a fundamental matter has not received the necessary attention of the agencies involved, including Janaagraha.

I mailed as below to CEC, Dr S Y Quraishi, IAS (syquraishi@eci.gov.in), on Feb 27.

Dear Dr Quraishi

Ever since I saw your interview on NDTV by Ms Sonia Singh, a few months back, I have been meaning to write to you. Now, again with the Gandhinagar (Bangalore) election recording a very poor voter turnout, I was meminded of my resolve, and hence this letter. All I am requesting you is to go through this blogpost, and see if it makes sense. And, if it does, issue necessary correctives.

Regards, Muralidhar Rao, President, PRAJA-RAAG

Further, I sent reminders on Mar 15, Mar 26, May 17. None of the mails bounced; but, all met with stony silence. Even with knowing what the problem was, as also its enormity, he refused to effect the necessary correctives. One wonders why.

Dr Quraishi has since retired. His name came up as one of the probables for Presidentship even. I am sure he will be assigned some cushy sinecure soon - totally undeserving, though, if you ask me. Well, he is not the first, right?

Thanks for this effort, Murali.

Voter rolls in neighboring states are far better. As a sample, I have analysed 357 lists of Malkajgiri constituency in AP. They are of higher quality than the 6,389 lists of Karnataka which I studied.

More importantly, I suspect indiscriminate deletions while leaving blatant duplicate entries intact. Without privileged access and sitting at home, we can find thousands of duplicate entries. If we analyse deeper and verify, there could be lakhs of duplicate entries as well as lakhs of people excluded by deletions. .

To begin with Commander, it's your persistant efforts and the lackadaisical responses to them from the powers that be, that made me start this petition

The accuracy may be better in AP. In fact, I am told it's really good in Himachal. But, if somebody from Bangalore takes a transfer to Hyderabad, or Shimla, have they facilitated the transfer process to enable him to exercise his franchise on the 181st day of his settling in these cities? I very much doubt it. And, that kind of a facilitation cannot be done by a set of amateurs. That's where professional players come in. Today's papers inform that India Post has similarly teamed up with Infosys to provide a set of services. Plainly these kinds of things cannot be entrusted to companies floated by the likes of Katta Subramania Naidu's son, which is unfortunately what is happening today.

Non-resident Malayalis have emerged as the most enthusiastic group about elections in India, with close to 10,000 registering themselves with the Election Commission after the government decided to give voting rights to NRIs. - - - Since the government allowed overseas Indians to register with the EC to take part in assembly elections last year, not a single vote was cast in four of the five states that went to polls this year — Punjab, UP, Uttarakhand, and Manipur. In Goa, a lone NRI cast his vote. - - - Last year, one person registered his name in the electoral list and also voted in the West Bengal assembly polls.

For the full text of the report in the ToI, click here.

Well, this is indeed surprising. So, does it mean that, for this limited purpose, the EC and the SEC's are able to get their act together? But, whatever, except perhaps for Kerala, NRI's form a miniscule percentage of the electorate. And, for the RI's the EC, SEC, CEO lot just seem unable to get their act in place. So, let's keep up the demand for professionalisation of the process, this way

The Karnataka high court on Tuesday ordered notices to be issued to the Election Commission of India, chief electoral officer of Karnataka and the BBMP on a PIL relating to revision of electoral rolls. - - - - The petitioners have sought for a direction to the authorities to undertake an intensive revision of the electoral rolls and complete it within three months from the date of commencement.

For the full report in the ToI, click here.

The question that begs an answer is how can the present machinery, which does not have the capacity to undertake the task, resulting in highly faulty voter lists, revisions after revisions, expected to do any better with a fresh exercise?

Besides, unless you have a centralised agency undertaking the work across the country, how can transpositions (using Form-8A) between states, work?

Very plainly, therefore, should not the petition have also prayed for engaging of a professional agency, like say TCS (who have been engaged by the Passport Department for all back-end operations) to undertake the job of compilation and maintenance of the voter lists across the country? Incidentally, that is what this on-line petition is all about.

The urban middle class respects institutions, lives by systems and thrives in an environment governed by equality and the rule of law. The politician, on the other hand, has, over the years, subverted various institutions and made a mockery of the law. There is little meeting ground between the two. And that is at the root of this clash. It didn’t matter earlier. Empirical evidence suggests that only 15% of the urban middle/upper class votes. But that could change.

Those of you who are old enough, look back at the decades gone by. Those who haven’t lived through those decades, ask your elders. The crowds at rallies in earlier decades comprised almost entirely of people carted in by the truckloads by political parties. They applauded on cue, booed on call and were available for any cause that caught their leaders’ fancy. But the crowds at last month’s protests in the Capital were different. They assembled not because of they were mobilised by professional political activists but because they agreed with what some amateur social activist had posted on Twitter and/or Facebook. It was the clarion call of their conscience and outrage at uncaring authorities that brought them out. They are the children of economic liberalisation — 24/7 news channels have made the constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of expression a reality for them; cheap telephones have made distances irrelevant; and affordable internet and the mushrooming of social media have made political clarion calls unnecessary.

More than 200 of the 543 parliamentary seats that will be up for grabs in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections will be urban ones. If one party or formation can sweep these, winning, say 140-150 of them, it will give itself a very good shot at grabbing power in Delhi. But there’s one problem. This amorphous group still doesn’t have a leader.

For the full essay in the Hindustan Times, click here.

Actually, there is an even bigger problem - the incompetence, incapacity, apathy, lack of accountability, all put together of the EC/ SEC/ NIC combo, in the preparation and maintenance of the voters' lists, that has resulted in the non-enfranchisement of vast sections of the youth, at least in Bangalore.

This was clearly what I realised when I wanted to contest for the BBMP elections, because of which I had to just give up. And, the situation hasn't changed any since then.

And, if it is true of Bangalore, I expect the situation can't be any better in other parts of the country, either. As such, all of the anger amongst the middle class, particularly the youth, will be in vain if this situation is not remedied. The answer to that lies plainly in outsourcing the job to professional organisations like TCS or Infosys, one of whom is currently doing the back-end work for the Passport dept, and the other for the Income Tax dept. To add your voice to that demand, click here.

At long last, I finally got the set of 35 pages of documents, dt 27/03/98, outlining the MOU between Election Commission of India and CMC Ltd, under RTI. Well, as expected, it does not cover the most critical function of "preparation and maintenance of the voters' list". And, as long as that function remains in the hands of the EC/ SEC/ NIC trio, who just don't have the capacity to handle it, we will continue to have highly inaccurate voter lists, undermining our democratic process at the beginning stage itself.

The job has plainly to be outsourced to a professional set up like TCS, Infosys, or even CMC. Now, while the political parties perhaps consider it "politically incorrect" to suggest outsourcing, I had thought the Civil Society groups would not be constrained by such mind-sets. Apparently, I was wrong, and most are indeed driven by political correctness rather than by overall correctness. Why else would they want to persist with the trio, inspite of their proving themselves incapable, repeatedly?

Our democracy has perhaps a long way to go before it can be called mature.

The total number of voters in Bangalore urban district, including BBMP limits, is 70,32,000. This is equal to 67.58 percent Electoral Population (EP) ratio. On April 7, the closing day of voters' registration it was 65.19.

1) Shouldn't the facility of registration as a voter be available right through the year, so that when a person attains the age of 18, and has resided at a location for 6 months, he/ she is readily able to get onto the list?

2) Is transposition of voters (using Form-8A) available across states? If not, what is the procedure to be adopted when a registered voter shifts to a different state? If yes, how can it work when the master voter lists are apparently maintained in regional languages?

3) What about the spelling, age, sex and other errors, which when attempting to correct through Form-6A, end up generating a fresh set of errors?

4) What about the differences in the entries between the list and the EPIC?

In the release, T V Mohandas Pai, vice-president, B.PAC, said that inconsistent electoral lists had prevented many registered voters from exercising their franchise. “These barriers that prevent people from participating in a more inclusive and engaged democratic process must be removed. I appeal to the authorities to urgently address this issue”.

For the full report in the New Indian Express, click here.

The 'authorities' don't have the capacity, and can't build it either. So, the answer is staring in the face - outsource it to professionals.

Conducting elections is a one-time exercise but maintaining voter lists is a continuous process. Relying on the state machinery to do that is very difficult because they have other obligations. A state government teacher can’t leave her job and update lists, neither is there any incentive for them to do so. With lakhs of people migrating to cities every year, it would be a big challenge for the backend machinery to handle this kind of work.

How can the system be improved? There is an urgent need for a national voter database. More technology like spatial maps — in which each polling booth is digitally marked — can be used to make the process of verification faster. The EC should have greater budgetary allocation so that it can have more permanent staff.

The above are the excerpts from an interview of R Ramnathan (Janaagraha), published in the ToI. For the full text, click here.

I am surprised, to say the least, that it has taken so long for a Mr Ramnathan to say this much even. But, the even more surprising is his suggestion of equipping the EC sufficiently to undertake the back-end work, even as the Passport Dept, Income Tax, Visa processing cells of foreign embassies, etc have found it far more reliable, practical, cost effective, and more, to outsource the job to professional organisations like TCS, Infosys, etc.

Is it because Mr Ramnathan too wants to be politically correct and not use the P/O (privatisation/ outsourcing) - words?

With about a fortnight left for the Lok Sabha elections, goof-ups in data consolidation by the state and central election offices have left the officials with two different sets of data for number of registered voters across categories. More than 5,000 voters from the ‘Others’ category have disappeared from the state electoral rolls. Officials blame this on duplication and error in the counting process itself. Either ways, the Election Commission (EC) has 8,453 people in the ‘Others’ category on its rolls, while the state has just 3,957. Officials are now scrambling to fix the error in order to ascertain the exact number of voters for the April 17 polls. - - - -He claimed that the CEO Karnataka data was accurate and that the entry of data at the polling station-levels may have cumulated into a bloated figure due to programming errors. “Entering data for the electoral rolls is done by us. But there were programming problems because of which the addition was not done properly. It is not a human error,” he said.

For the full report in the New Indian Express, click here.

How long do we have to live with this mediocrity in the very first step of our democratic process? Isn't it obvious that between the EC, SEC and BBMP, they can't ever get down to giving us a voter list of a reasonable level of accurcacy, and deriving from that, isn't it obvious that the entire job of preparation and maintenance of voters' list has to be outsourced to professional outfits?

Even as I was composing this post, a political activist friend called to ask what to do when a name is found to be missing from the list, at this stage. I said that very little can be done about it as far as this election is concerned. The person whose name is missing will very likely have to go through the process of filing Form-6, all over again, after the elections.

I also added that the position has been this way from the very beginning, and neither the political parties nor the Civil Society seem too keen to bring about effective change. The activist friend was livid.

Well, I would like to believe that I have one more person beginning to talk my language.
 

Cdr P G Bhat, the well-meaning crusader for more accurate electoral rolls, has, like at every election for nearly a decade, once again tried to bring to the attention of the EC, SEC, BBMP combo, in charge of preparing the list, the very many anomalies in it, both old and new. And, like always, he kept the public informed too, through his posts on various google-groups, the latest of which reads as below:

Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka (CEO-KA) has published the list of applications for inclusion in the electoral rolls. 3,66,640 of 4,65,377 applications are approved. However, a search for voter names (with relative names) as given in the list show that more than 99% of these names are not added to the voter list for the forthcoming BBMP elections. Either the citizens are not included as voters though their applications are shown approved or the names are entered differently from what is shown in the approved list.

Of 58,097 applications for deletion of names from voter lists, 44,730 are approved. Sample checks with EPIC numbers show that none of these records is deleted.

After the elections the authorities will put blame on voter apathy for poor turnout.

Election after election it's the same story, proving very clearly that the EC, SEC, BBMP combo don't have the capacity (nor can they build the capacity) to compile and maintain the voters' list to any reasonable degree of accuracy, as was stated in the opening post in this blog, way back in 2010. It was also stated that the only answer lay in outsourcing of the job to reputed professional agencies, quite like Passport office, Income Tax dept, and others have already done, benefiting all the stake-holders involved.

Apparently, the citizens are still to wake up to this reality, and very obviously, there's no redemption till that happens and the demand arises for professionalisation of the job.

From panchayat elections to Lok Sabha polls, there should be a common electoral roll, a Parliamentary committee has recommended, saying it will help weed out duplicate voters and bring down cost of holding the democratic exercise.

The Committee feels that a common electoral roll will reduce cost, time, and check electoral malpractices in the country.

- - - While Election Commission is entrusted with the task of holding Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, the State Election Commissions supervise elections to local bodies.

Interestingly, it was the Commission which had earlier raised the issue to have common electoral rolls. - - - The Election Commission had maintained that a single electoral roll "will be a huge national saving" and it will not pose any problems to the electoral machinery on the field as it is the same at the ground level.

"This may need some minor amendments to the local laws of the states concerned, but will subserve great national interest of economy in government expenditure on elections," the Election Commission had said.

For the full text of the report (emphasis added by me) in NDTV.com, click here.

This has been something long overdue, and now that a Parliamentary committee has made the recommendation, one hopes it'll get the required push from all around, and become a reality well before the next general elections.

The process will require compiling electoral lists across the country, providing for updating on a regular basis, linking names to Aadhaar, etc etc, which is perhaps best outsourced to professional players, quite like Income Tax and Passport dept have already done in the case of their back-end work. 

Set against the sea on the southernmost tip, Kollemcode, a fishing hamlet in Kanyakumari, sits on the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border.

- - - The 'privilege', if one could call it that, is that many living here possess two ration cards and vote in both states. A fisherman, Susai Mariasimson has voter IDs of Kerala and TN. In TN, he votes for AIADMK and in Kerala for its rival, Congress. He lives in Pulluvala in Kerala, 7km from Kollemcode. "But I have relatives here and my business interests are in TN. I have two voter IDs," he says. While Kollemcode falls within Killiyur constituency in TN, on the other side of the border it is Neyattinkara.

- - -This time, however, they are all in a fix. Elections in both states are on the same day, May 16. Villagers have been meeting near the local church discussing in hushed tones how they could remove the ink from their right index finger and hop across to vote in Kerala the same day. Michael boasts, "I have voted three times in a day in the past. There are certain chemicals that can be used." Mariasimson says he rubbed lime to remove the ink.

For the full text of the report (emphasis added by me) in the ToI, click here.

The need for common electoral roll across the country (refer my post of 3rd May, scrolling above) is very clearly the urgent need of the day. Perhaps, the civil society needs to come together to demand its implementation earliest.