Under fire, EC orders special drive to add genuine electors ‘left out’ during SIR | India News
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission on Thursday ordered a special drive to identify and add back genuine electors who may have been “left out” during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive completed in 20 states, besides facilitating first-time or young electors.As part of the drive – meant to percolate to the grassroots the message that the deletions made during SIR, if erroneous, can be undone at any time by simply filling up Form 6 (for fresh enrolment) – booth level officers (BLOs) will visit homes of electors who were there in the pre-SIR electoral roll but were not included in the current electoral roll. They will, during these visits, ascertain the present status of such electors and facilitate their enrolment through Form 6, wherever a person is found to be eligible. This could be due to a valid eligibility proof not submitted earlier, corrected mapping to roll from last SIR, return of a shifted voter at registered address, or a young voter who has turned 18 since SIR, etc, said an official.“Voter enrolment is a continuous process and any person not yet enrolled in the electoral roll or whose name has got deleted can apply for enrolment at any point of time. The objective of the special drive is to identify and facilitate such electors,” EC said in a letter to state chief electoral officers (CEOs) Thursday. This followed a meeting held by EC with state/UT CEOs on Tuesday.As per the decision taken by the full commission on Sept 26, no declaration will need to be attached with Form 6 during the special drive.Nearly 7.7 crore voters were deleted across 13 states covered in SIR’s first two phases, though net deletions came to around 5.6 crore. In Phase 3, completed in seven states, net deletions total nearly 24 lakh.The special drive’s timing is significant as it comes days after a report in The Indian Express report alleged that election commissioners S S Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised questions over the SIR process in internal notes. However, the EC, in a statement released after a full commission meeting on Sept 26, placed it on record that all decisions related to SIR were unanimously approved by the CEC and the commissioners.The opposition, however, continues to amplify the issue, “unilaterally” blaming CEC Gyanesh Kumar for a “flawed” SIR, “unauthorised” changes to Form 6 and allegedly limited access of field officers to ECINet for making changes.Sources in the EC, however, told TOI Friday that the special drive is only in furtherance of the repeated directions by CEC to BLOs that “not a single Indian citizen who has completed 18 years of age should be left out of electoral roll”.An EC official said an average 10% of 800-900 electors per booth were deleted through SIR. Thus, each BLO will have to verify enrolment eligibility of less than 100 “deleted” voters. With the EC instructing BLOs on Friday to visit the homes of 20-25 electors per week, house-to-house outreach and verification is expected to last a month.BLOs who visit the houses of deleted electors shall indicate the present status of each such elector in a list of absent, permanently shifted, deceased, duplicate and foreigner electors prepared by them. Electors for whom Form 6 has been filled up will also be indicated.They will share this list with booth level agents (BLAs) of recognised political parties and with electoral registration officers (EROs), along with the filled-up Form 6 and their field verification report. ERO is the competent authority to decide on addition or deletion.At the end of this exercise, the booth-wise lists prepared as above will also be shared by the EROs with the representatives of the political parties, giving them a further opportunity to enable enrolment of any left-out electors.
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Booth-level camps shall be organised to facilitate submission of applications for enrolment. Special camps may also be organised for enrolment of people living in night shelters, labour colonies and also for homeless & marginalised persons.As part of SIR completed in 20 states, a list of ASDD voters was prepared by each BLO with the probable reason for non-inclusion of their names. This list was displayed at the notice board of respective panchayat bhawans/urban local bodies and offices of the BDOs/panchayat, shared with the BLAs and with the political parties and also uploaded on the CEO website.Thereafter, the draft was published and shared with the political parties and uploaded on the CEO website. The final electoral roll was published after decisions on the claims and objections by the EROs and includes the list of electors that were added or deleted after the draft publication.
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