Guwahati: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has directed electoral authorities to launch a special drive to identify and enrol eligible voters left out of electoral rolls after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), amid continuing scrutiny of the exercise and protests demanding removal of Chief Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities.
The drive will cover voters whose names appeared in the pre-SIR rolls but are missing from the current rolls, as well as first-time and young voters who have not yet been enrolled. The Commission issued the directive after a meeting with state Chief Electoral Officers on October 1.
The move comes days after The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected on record at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders related to the SIR, including issues concerning voter additions and deletions.
The ECI said voter enrolment is a continuous process and that no eligible citizen should be denied an opportunity to register merely because they were not included during the SIR enumeration.
Under the exercise, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will compare the current electoral rolls with the pre-SIR rolls and prepare booth-wise lists of voters whose names have been dropped. They will then conduct house-to-house verification to establish the present status of the voters and facilitate their enrolment through Form 6 wherever they are found eligible.
Each BLO has been asked to cover at least 20 to 25 such voters a week, with the verification exercise to be completed within a month. BLOs will also identify eligible voters who were left out, along with first-time and young voters, during their field visits and facilitate their enrolment.
The status of each identified voter, including those for whom Form 6 applications have been submitted, will be recorded.
The booth-wise lists will be shared with Booth Level Agents (BLAs) of recognised political parties and the concerned Electoral Registration Officers (EROs). The EROs will receive the Form 6 applications along with field verification reports and take further action under the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
The Commission has also directed electoral authorities to organise Booth Level Camps to assist citizens with enrolment applications. Special camps will be held for people living in night shelters and labour colonies, homeless persons and other marginalised groups.
The lists of voters classified as ‘Absent’, ‘Shifted’, ‘Dead’ and ‘Duplicate’ (ASDD), prepared during the SIR enumeration, have already been displayed at local government offices, shared with political party representatives and uploaded on the websites of the respective Chief Electoral Officers, the ECI said.
At the end of the special drive, EROs will again share booth-wise lists with political party representatives so that they can facilitate the enrolment of eligible voters who may have been left out.
The ECI has also asked electoral authorities to conduct awareness and mobilisation campaigns through educational institutions, local outreach programmes, Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) activities and other platforms, while monitoring the progress of the exercise.
The special drive comes amid opposition allegations that the SIR process has disenfranchised eligible voters. Data cited in the supplied reports showed significant deletions from electoral rolls during the revision, including the removal of more than 60 lakh entries classified as dead voters.
The Commission has maintained that SIR decisions were taken unanimously, despite reports of differences among the Election Commissioners.