SIR: Deadline to file claims, objections nears

At a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) camp inside a government school in south east Delhi’s Noor Nagar, 67-year-old Farzana stood beside a Booth Level Officer, carefully reviewing each page of her documents as she filled out Form 6 to have her name restored to the draft electoral rolls

At a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) camp inside a government school in south east Delhi’s Noor Nagar, 67-year-old Farzana stood beside a Booth Level Officer, carefully reviewing each page of her documents as she filled out Form 6 to have her name restored to the draft electoral rolls. Speaking to HT, she said hers was the only name missing from the electoral rolls among the eight members of her family.

Photo for representation (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Farzana is among the 4.76 million people whose names were removed from the draft electoral rolls. She was among hundreds who turned up at SIR special camps on October 25, as the October 30 deadline for filing claims and objections in Delhi approaches.

“All four of my sons, my two daughters and my husband have the same address on their documents, and all their names have appeared on the electoral roll. I have no idea why mine is missing. I have been living in this locality since 1982 and have voted in several elections here,” she said. “I can barely write these documents due to lack of proper education, so I asked my daughter to accompany me. She helped me fill form 6.”

The Delhi CEO’s October 25 bulletin on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) said that 2,57,726 Form-6 applications for inclusion in electoral rolls were received between August 31 and October 24.To be sure, this number includes both new electors and those deleted by the special intensive revision (SIR). During the same period, 19,025 Form-7 applications seeking deletions and 51,471 Form-8 applications for corrections were received.

This period also includes roughly a month since the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced special camps across the country to help voters come back into the rolls. The first special camp was held on September 20 in Delhi and since then, authorities have held more than 89,000 such camps, the CEO’s office has said.

All applications will be disposed of by November 30 – the last date for disposal of all claims and objections before the final roll is published on December 4, the CEO’s office said.

Shabana Begum, a Booth Level Officer (BLO) in Okhla, said she had received 204 notices and had resolved all the discrepancies related to them.

“I received a total of 204 notices and had resolved all the discrepancies by October 22. Now, most of the people coming to the camp are those seeking to submit Forms 6 and 8,” said Shabana.

Mahtab Jabi, another Booth Level Officer (BLO) at a camp in South East Delhi, said most discrepancies stemmed from mismatches in names and had been resolved with the help of alternative documents.

“A significant proportion of the notices were related to name mismatches. We asked people to provide alternative documents, which helped us resolve these discrepancies easily,” Jabi said.

A 37-year-old government school teacher, a BLO in Sarojini Nagar’s Pillanji village, said half the people have turned up compared to last Sunday.

“Last Sunday, around 100 people visited the camp, while the turnout today was nearly half that number,” the BLO said. “Many of them were tenants who had moved to other parts of the city. We advised them to use the online facility, if feasible, rather than travel all the way here. This could be one of the reasons for the lower turnout today.”