Nationwide SIR: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced to carry out pan-India Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters’ list, with 12 states and union territories to be covered in
phase one.
While addressing a press conference, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said, “The first part was the Bihar SIR, which was conducted successfully. There were zero appeals in Bihar.”
He further said that the last SIR was conducted 21 years ago in between 2001-2004. He said frequent migration, double voter id cards, non-removal of dead voters, and wrongful inclusion of foreigners have taken place in all these years.
“Hence, ECI decided to conduct step-wise SIR across the country,” the CEC said. He said that since 1951, SIR has been conducted in the country eight times.
CEC Kumar further informed that the states and UTs which will undergo the SIR, will have their voter list frozen as of midnight today. The EROs will print unique enumerate forms of every registered voter in these states and UTs.
BLOs Will Visit Every House Three Times
The poll body outlined the key processes of SIR stating that the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will visit every house thrice to conduct the exercise.
The BLOs will also perform duties like, distributing the EFs to each existing elector and helping the elector in matching/ linking with either their name or their relative’s name in last SIR held in 2002-2004.
The ECI last week directed the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) to finalise their preparations for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter lists in their respective States and Union Territories, a press release by the ECI said. The ECI’s two-day Conference of CEOs on SIR preparedness concluded at the India International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Management (IIIDEM) in New Delhi.
According to the press release, the Commission assessed the progress made on the directions previously issued to the CEOs to map the current electors with the electors as per the last SIR in their respective States and UTs.
The ECI also interacted one-on-one with the CEOs of poll-bound States and UTs, including Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, and West Bengal.
SIR In Bihar
Earlier this year, the poll body announced to conduct the massive SIR exercise in Bihar, which is scheduled to go into polls next month. The ECI set the deadline of September 30 to publish the final roll. The massive exercise began the next day, with people filling the forms.
The ECI said that the SIR is aimed to identify illegal immigrant voters, and those who have two voter ids, migrated to other states or have died.
However, the exercise was strongly opposed by the opposition, which called
it an attempt at “vote theft”. The matter reached the Supreme Court which, in multiple hearings, gave orders like considering Aadhar as proof of identity for the voters whose names have been struck, and asked ECI to publish names of 65 lakh voters whose names were deleted among others.
The top court, however, refused to strike down the entire exercise, saying that the ECI has the authority and power to conduct the SIR.
In the final roll, the ECI released the names of 7.42 crore voters in Bihar, which was 42 lakh less than the previous number. The ECI said after proper representation, many names were added and the final removal stood at 42 lakhs.
