EC rolls out SIR phase 3 in 16 states, 3 UTs with staggered schedule
SIR in HP, JK and Ladakh will be announced later keeping in view weather conditions
New Delhi: The Election Commission on Thursday rolled out phase 3 of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in 16 states and three Union Territories involving 36.73 crore voters in a staggered manner beginning May 30.
The states and UTs where the SIR will be carried out are Delhi, Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Chandigarh, Telangana, Punjab, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Nagaland, Tripura, Dadar and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
Punjab, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Telangana are opposition-ruled among the states where the SIR exercise will be held.
Over 3.94 lakh booth level officers (BLOs) will go house-to-house of 36.73 crore electors during the latest poll roll revision exercise. They will be assisted by 3.42 lakh booth level agents (BLAs) appointed by political parties during the enumeration phase.
The schedule for the SIR in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh will be announced later keeping in view weather conditions in snow-bound areas, the EC said in a statement.
Both Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are ruled by opposition parties.
Jammu and Kashmir is a Union Territory (UT) with the provision of a legislative assembly. Ladakh is another UT, but without a legislature.
Once phase 3 is completed, the entire country except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh will be covered under the SIR.
The schedule of SIR phase 3 has been fixed keeping in view the common field machinery with the ongoing house listing of the ongoing Census exercise.
The final electoral rolls of the 16 states and three UTs will be published on different dates this year, beginning with Odisha, Sikkim, Mizoram and Manipur on September 6 and ending with Tripura on December 23.
The final poll roll of Delhi, along with those of Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, will be out on October 7.
In its instructions to the state chief electoral officers, the EC underlined that for electors whose enumeration forms have not returned, the BLO would identify a probable cause, such as absent, shifted, dead and duplicate entry based on an inquiry from the nearby electors and would note the same.
Following a Supreme Court order issued during the Bihar SIR, the Aadhaar card has been included as the 12th identity document.
It told the state chief secretaries that during SIR, no official connected with the exercise will be transferred without the EC’s prior approval.
The SIR has already been conducted in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.
A “special revision” was conducted in Assam.
In his message on the latest phase of SIR, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said, “I appeal to all electors to enthusiastically participate in phase 3 of the SIR and fill their enumeration forms. SIR is being conducted with the objective to ensure that only eligible voters to be included in the electoral roll and no ineligible names to be included.”
The combined voters’ list of nine states and three UTs in phase 2 of SIR was pruned by 10.2 per cent, with over 60 lakh dead voters removed.
The voter base across the 12 states and UTs stood at more than 50.99 crore when phase 2 of the SIR was announced by the EC on October 27 last.
Post the exercise, the voters’ list stands at 45.81 crore — a decline of over 5.18 crore. In percentage terms, the electoral rolls have been reduced by 10.2 per cent.
Due to a variety of reasons, SIR has seen frequent tweaking in schedules.
For instance, in Bihar, political parties had approached the Supreme Court challenging SIR in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
Recently, TMC president and then West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee personally pleaded before a bench of the chief justice of India against the poll roll cleanup exercise in her state.
As the EC was preparing for SIR in Bihar, its officials had claimed that several nationals from Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar were found by its grassroots level functionaries.
But eventually, the poll authority did not share any numbers or proof of such people who were not eligible to be on the voters’ list.
Opposition parties had dubbed the EC’s claims as a ploy to carry out SIR to target electors not aligned to the BJP and its allies.
