The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls preparations are picking up in Uttarakhand, with election authorities starting the exercise of finding out the voters who migrated to the state after 2003. The program is among a series of national exercises under the supervision of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to achieve precision, openness and validity in voter lists of the country in future elections.
The state electoral machinery has begun to create an independent list of voters that did not appear in the 2003 voter roll but are included in the current electoral list, according to the officials. This covers those individuals who, since 2003, transferred to Uttarakhand and later registered as voters. The year 2003 is the point of verification since it was the last full roll update of the electorate before there was a series of massive revisions and migrations that influenced the demographics in the voter base.
The 2003 voters’ list is being reprinted under the SIR process to include all the assembly constituencies, and the citizens are being urged to ensure that their names are on the previous roll. Individuals who are not listed on the 2003 list will be verified in order to ascertain their eligibility, residence status, as well as documentary compliance. BLOs are also deployed to carry out the door-to-door checks, cross-verify, and properly categorize new and migrated voters.
According to the officials, the electorate is being categorized into various groups: those whose names are in both the 2003 and present electoral lists; those who migrated after 2003; voters whose addresses have been changed; and those whose documentation was not verified. The categories will facilitate the simplification of the verification and eliminate duplication, fraudulent records, or obsolete voter information.
It is believed that the SIR will be able to achieve significant changes on the voter register in the state, particularly in urban centres like Dehradun, Haridwar and Haldwani, where there has been a high rate of migration over the years. According to the election authorities, the exercise will do away with the discrepancies and assist in preparing a more accurate list of voters for the upcoming elections.
Simultaneously, political observers observe that the exercise can have an impact on the migrant voters, who will be subjected to further scrutiny and document verification. Nevertheless, the officials have explained that the exercise is only meant to guarantee electoral integrity and not to disqualify any real voter.
Election Commission directs all the political parties to hire Booth Level Agents to coordinate with the BLOs and help to check on the revision exercise. The process of public hearings and verification drives will go on in the coming few weeks, and then it can be assumed that finally an error-free and revised voter list will be provided.
The SIR process would also come in handy in enhancing the Uttarakhand electoral system, and all eligible voters would be counted, and all ineligible entries would be detected prior to the next elections.
