Booth level officers (BLOs) in Delhi will carry out a re-verification of all 4.7 million names removed during the special intensive revision (SIR) in the Capital till now, chief electoral officer (CEO) Ashok Kumar said on Friday, effectively ensuring a second round of checks before voters are deleted from the final voter roll.
The drive, which has begun in some areas and is set to end on October 30, will see roughly 15,000 BLOs – many of them government school teachers who’ve been working on SIR for almost four months now – making the rounds of hundreds of thousands of households across the Capital. BLOs have also been directed to ensure that cases of voters with minor mistakes in details must not be rejected summarily, he added.
Another 3.3 million people – chief minister Rekha Gupta , former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal , former deputy prime minister LK Advani, external affairs minister S Jaishankar , and election commissioner SS Sandhu – were flagged for logical discrepancies. That process is set to end on November 30. The final roll will be published on December 4. In an October 1 letter to the chief electoral officers (CEOs) of all states and Union territories, the Election Commission of India (ECI) ordered a special drive for left-out and first-time electors. BLOs will compare the current roll with the pre-SIR roll, list the names missing from it, and visit those homes to help people file Form 6, covering 20 to 25 electors a week over about a month.
This means that they can seek supporting documents and examine the voter’s identity. The new measure is part of a string of steps in recent weeks that have either relaxed controversial SIR procedures, allowed left-out people to come back as new voters, and added more safeguards before deletion of a name.
Another election official said that in cases of logical discrepancies or non-mapping with previous SIR, BLOs have been directed to assist voters if there is a minor mismatch in their personal details or their age.
