E-Paper
‘Nobody knows if SIR forms will be accepted or rejected’
In Chennai, residents face challenges in voter registration due to outdated documentation requirements, raising concerns about disenfranchisement ahead of elections.
When K Nagarajan, a retired real estate manager based in Chennai submitted enumeration forms of his and five members of the family’s verification under the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) to local booth level officers (BLOs), they warned him that his two daughters-in-law, M Tamilselvi and S Subhasini, may be disenfranchised, owing to the lack of documentation in the previous SIR from 2005. Tamilselvi’s parents died five years ago in Bengaluru.
“How can we possibly get something like that from parents who are dead in another state?” asked Nagarajan.
“They have their Aadhaar cards, voter IDs, bank accounts and yet the BLOs are saying their forms will be rejected because we can’t fill the details from 2005. I’m fed up. If we lose two votes in our family, there’s nothing we can do. But thousands like us will lose their vote because of such issues,” he said.
Both women have lived in Chennai for over a decade and have been active voters in that time, added Natarajan.
According to guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India, people who were below voting age in 2005 are mandated to give relevant details of family members, mostly parents, who were registered voters at the time.
Nagarajan’s complaints reflect those expressed by others. Some have shifted homes, immigrated from other states, or are unable to find their details from 2005. Some have alleged a lack of uniformity in the instructions issued by BLOs.
S Sharmila, a software engineer based in Chennai’s IT corridor, Tharamani, said that was unable to retrieve her name from the ECI’s website because of an address change— she moved a street away in the same locality after 2005. “I spent hours on the ECI’s website and I wasn’t able to download my details. I was so stressed that I might lose my vote,” Sharmila said. Her family had received the enumeration forms from BLOs last week when they were distributing them door-to-door after the exercise began on November 4.
The website of the Election Commission of India (ECI) enables people to fill enumeration forms online and searches for voter ID numbers and names from the 2005 list. For several people, this has proved either too time consuming or it did not work at all.
The loss of democratic mandate that threatens so many in Tamil Nadu is central to the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMk) -led regime’s pushback against the exercise.
With only months to go before the upcoming assembly elections, the party, led by chief minister and party chief MK Stalin, has taken to the streets to express their disapproval. Stalin has called the exercise an alleged attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to erase voting rights, of minorities and women in particular, to aid the efforts of its ally in the state and DMK’s primary rival, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
The DMK’s pushback extends to the Supreme Court, where there is an ongoing hearing on a petition against the exercise, filed just a day before the exercise was due to begin on November 4.
The BJP and AIADMK have, in turn, accused the DMK of being afraid of the exercise which they say will clean up the electoral rolls, leaving only genuine voters.
Meanwhile, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) began organising “election helpdesks” in each of the 941 polling booths across the capital city from November 18. Residents across the city whom HT met at the helpdesks said that they were able to complete filling details in the enumeration forms only because of the help from BLOs and booth level agents (BLAs, appointed by political parties) at these desks.
Sumitha and Amitha are primary school teachers at the corporation school in south Chennai currently engaged as BLOs full-time since November 4. They work as polling officers during elections as well, and number among the 68,467 BLOs in the state.
But, that means a prolonged absence from the classroom. “Our students have exams from December 15 and their parents keep asking us when we will come back,” said Sumitha. Of the 23 faculty members in the corporation’s primary school, only 7 were appointed as BLOs. “The remaining teachers are sharing the classroom work and taking turns to teach our classes,” said her colleague.
After the exercise began on November 4, Sumitha and Amitha would distribute forms door-to-door along with a booth-level agent (BLA). Since November 18, both have been engaged at the helpdesk in the corporation school.
The problems with retrieval of details are among those most prevalent. “Even for us, it is confusing,” said Amitha, showing a bundle of hundreds of papers— prints of the 2005 voter list for booth number 125, the booth in question. ““There are five Sekhars in this list and we don’t know how to match that to the individual. And how do we know which Sekhar’s father is Kottaiya? It takes a minimum of 20 minutes to do one application,” she added.
After collecting the completed enumeration forms, the BLOs have to digitise them using their personal smart phones. “I’m 53-years-old and I’m not able to read the tiny print of the 2005 list. We barely have any training so I take help from my children to digitise these forms and the work continues till midnight,” said Sumitha.
BLOs in the city’s outskirts face similar struggles. In residential localities, some BLOs like S Lakshmi in Chengalpattu district have taken the help of the residents welfare association (RWA). Meanwhile, the active north east monsoon continues to bring intermittent heavy rainfall. “Because of the rains, I’m not able to go door-to-door,” says Lakshmi. The RAW lent her their library where she set up a helpdesk like those in Chennai.
Even as the BLOs complain of the overwhelming stress of the exercise, and amid reports of multiple deaths, some by suicide, and hospitalisations of BLOs across the country, as well as reports of BLOs having to suffer indignities and take on people’s work in states like Rajasthan, in Tamil Nadu, some have alleged irregularities in the BLO’s instructions and flaws in their procedure.
“First they came and gave us only one enumeration form instead of two,” said E T Pooventhan, a voter in Thiruvallur district. After filling both forms, electors are meant to hand over one to the BLOs and keep the other for themselves. “If we are not able to fill in the details of 2005, they are asking us to submit as many documents as possible from the list of 13 such as our Aadhar, voter IDs. Some BLOs are asking for documents even if we fill.”
Prashant, a veterinarian supervisor in the Chennai corporation engaged as a BLO has been receiving calls from confused voters not just across the city but also from Trichy district. “A BLO is not supposed to give a form to a voter who has shifted. But, people usually vote in the same booth even if they move,” he said. HT observed a caller from Trichy tell him that he and his wife shifted from Chennai to their native Trichy in their old age after their children went abroad. But their registered voting address remains under booth number 137 in Chennai.
In a government aided school in Adyar serving as a helpdesk, a BLO is seated at a cramped desk along a BLA from AIADMK and four from DMK. The sight is an interesting one, and according to some, represents the trickling down of the bipolar rivalry of the two heavyweights to the SIR helpdesks.
““DMK is the ruling party so they are dominating us here. We have to be very careful when they are handling enumeration forms,” says Ravi Selvaraj, AIADMK’s district secretary. Reiterating his party’s public position on the SIR, he addressed the problem faced by the elderly Trichy couple, “They have to change their address, get enumeration forms in Trichy and vote there and not in Chennai,” he said.
Each of the 4 DMK BLAs are currently in possession of a smartphone sponsored by senior party members, where they independently upload details for the party’s internal database. DMK’s BLA B Moorthy demonstrates the advantage. He uses an example of a particular locality and proceeds to demonstrate intimate knowledge of the party alignments in each house.
For BLOs, this kind of knowledge makes it easier to identify voters and their houses. “It’s easier for us to identify voters in slums where everyone knows everyone,” says Ravi.
As of November 19, of the 64.1 million voters of Tamil Nadu, enumeration forms were distributed to 95.16% of the population and 17.37% were digitised, according to the ECI. “Nobody has a clue if the forms will be accepted or rejected,” said Prashant. “The uncertainty looms ahead of the time when draft rolls are published between December 9 and January 8 but some are relieved having just been able to submit a completed form for now.
