EC launches special drive to restore names dropped during SIR, BLOs to trace left-out voters | India News
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission has directed state poll officials to launch a special drive to immediately enrol “left-out” and new voters in areas where the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has been completed. The move comes amid allegations by the opposition parties that the electoral roll revision exercise disenfranchised crores of eligible citizens.The instructions were conveyed in an official communication issued on Thursday, following a virtual meeting with state chief electoral officers (CEOs), as cited by PTI.The drive aims to re-enrol eligible voters who were omitted or deleted during the intensive revision, while also registering first-time and “young voters”.The Commission stressed that voter registration is an ongoing process and that no eligible citizen should be disenfranchised for not being included during the SIR enumeration.Booth Level Officers (BLOs) have been instructed to cross-check the current electoral rolls with pre-SIR lists to identify electors whose names were included earlier but dropped from the final roll.BLOs will conduct house-to-house verification of all identified missing electors. Each officer will be tasked with covering 20 to 25 electors a week, with the verification drive targeted for completion within a month.BLOs will also collect Form 6 applications on the spot from newly eligible young electors and genuine left-out voters. The lists will subsequently be shared directly with Booth Level Agents (BLAs) of recognised political parties to ensure transparency.The move follows a September 26 meeting of the full Commission, comprising Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. After the meeting, the poll panel said the declaration attached to Form 6 was meant “specifically for SIR” and that “for non-SIR period, the Forms applicable as per Rules (the Registration of Electors Rules 1960) will be used.”The Election Commission has withdrawn the additional SIR-related declaration attached to Form 6 in states where the electoral roll revision exercise has been completed.
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The declaration has been removed from the ECINET app and portal, as well as the respective Chief Electoral Officer portals. New applicants in these states will now only have to submit the regular statutory Form 6 for voter enrolment.In states and Union territories where the SIR exercise is still underway, the additional declaration remains available on the ECINET portal. Under the declaration, new applicants are required to provide details linking themselves, their parents or grandparents to electoral rolls prepared during an earlier SIR.
