The ECI’s fresh exercise comes after around 13 crore names were left out of draft rolls across 30 states and UTs and amid internal objections by two Election Commissioners over aspects of the SIR process.
BY PC Bureau
October 2: The Election Commission has launched a fresh voter-enrolment exercise in the 20 states and Union Territories where its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has already been completed, in a move aimed at identifying and restoring eligible voters who may have been left out of the revised rolls, The Indian Express has reported.
The Commission issued the directive to state Chief Electoral Officers in a letter dated September 29 and reiterated it during a video conference with the CEOs on Thursday.
The move comes against the backdrop of the large-scale deletions during the SIR exercise. Around 13 crore names were left out of the draft rolls prepared across 30 states and Union Territories, triggering questions over whether all the deletions were justified and whether eligible voters had been excluded.
The fresh enrolment exercise also follows disclosure last week that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi recorded objections on 14 occasions over a period of 10 months to decisions taken in the name of the Commission without their knowledge. Among the issues flagged were changes to Form 6, the statutory form for inclusion of names in electoral rolls, and the centralised control of ECINet, the software used for preparing the SIR rolls.
The September 29 directive instructs Chief Electoral Officers, District Election Officers and Electoral Registration Officers to undertake a special enrolment campaign through the existing continuous-updation mechanism. The exercise is to cover voters who were left out of the revised rolls as well as young people becoming eligible to vote for the first time.
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A significant distinction has been made for states where the SIR has already been completed. Applicants there will be required to submit the regular statutory Form 6 and will not have to furnish the additional declaration introduced specifically for the SIR exercise.
Officials who attended Thursday’s meeting said the Commission has also asked state election authorities to undertake a comparison of the electoral rolls before and after the SIR. The exercise is intended to identify cases where names may have been deleted without adequate justification.
Where necessary, election officials have been asked to visit voters at their homes to verify their claims. The Commission has also asked state authorities to involve political parties and their booth-level agents in identifying eligible voters who may have been left out and in helping them submit Form 6 applications.
The directive effectively puts the onus on election machinery in states where the SIR has concluded to look again at the impact of the revision, while simultaneously opening a fresh route for eligible voters to seek inclusion in the rolls.
