The row around the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) continues to intensify and the latest addition is TVK chief and actor-turned-politician Vijay. He has now moved the Supreme Court against the ongoing exercise. Several petitions have also been filed in the top court against the exercise in the top court, including Kerala, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. The second phase of the SIR is being conducted in 12 states and union territories (UTs).
Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will be going to elections next year, and hence the EC has decided to conduct the revision of voter rolls here. Several political parties have opposed the timing. The other argument that the opposition has maintained is the shortage of the staff.
For the initial enumeration stage, the ECI has given a month’s time to the booth level officers (BLOs). The reports of suicide of several BLOs have already made headlines.
This comes as BJP and DMK are also at loggerheads over the SIR. BJP’s K Annamalai criticised Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin and said that a large number of fake voters have been enrolled in the electoral system, which needs to be removed on an immediate basis.
“In Bihar, 6.49 per cent fake voters have been removed. Tamil Nadu has a large number of fake voters. Revenue department officers supporting the DMK are the ones protesting. The DMK government is refusing to convene an all-party meeting,” he said.
He said the BJP BLA2 agents are doing excellent work in filling out the application forms.
On Sunday, FIRs were filed against 60 BLOs and 7 supervisors for negligence in SIR in Greater Noida. On the orders from DM Medha Rupam, cases have been registered under Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
SIR leads to reverse migration
Amid the revision of the electoral roll, border posts in West Bengal are seeing increased migration of ‘illegal Bangladeshis’. At the Hakimpur BSF border outpost in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas, a stretch has become an informal departure corridor for “illegal Bangladeshis”, who have been living in the state for years.
Families with cloth bags, plastic bottles and all waiting in silent. One of them said, “Let us go home.” The scenes are similar across the South Bengal border belt, security personnel and local residents say the number of Bangladeshi nationals trying to return to their country has risen suddenly this month.
All this due to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls underway in West Bengal. With SIR demanding verification of older documents, several said they preferred leaving rather than risking questioning and possible detention.
“Verification is mandatory. Biometric details are sent to district authorities and the state police. That takes time,” one of them said.
29-year-old Manirul Sheikh, who worked in garment units in Dhulagori and collected scrap iron, “I paid nearly Rs 20,000 to get documents.”
Centre slams opposition
Union Minister Pralhad Joshi, meanwhile, questioned the Congress party’s decision to organise a rally on December 14 over the SIR of electoral rolls. He asserted that the exercise is not new and has been undertaken several times in the past. He claimed Congress had itself sought the revision after alleging the presence of ineligible voters following the Maharashtra Assembly elections.
“SIR (Special Intensive Revision), as our party and many of our ministers have said many times, is not a new thing. This has happened many times. SIR was started only after the demand of the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi. He wrote after the Maharashtra elections and said that there are many people who are not eligible, but they are in the voters’ list… After that, the Election Commission decided for SIR… Wasn’t this (Special Intensive Revision) done before? When the revision was done in Karnataka in 2008, the names of about 40 lakh voters were removed… This is an ongoing process,” Joshi told ANI.
SP seeks extension of SIR in UP
The Samajwadi Party (SP) president, Akhilesh Yadav has now urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to extend the ongoing SIR in Uttar Pradesh by three months. He cited wide-scale irregularities in voter enumeration, missing voter lists, duplication of lists at polling stations and failure of BLOs to distribute forms door-to-door in several constituencies.
In his letter to the Commission, Akhilesh Yadav said, “Mr. Akhilesh Yadav, for a three-month extension for the S.I.R. process in Uttar Pradesh, and the complaints that BLOs in the 70-Ghosi Lok Sabha constituency and various assembly constituencies in Mau district were unable to go door-to-door to provide voter enumeration forms to voters, and that the 2003 voter list had not been uploaded at more than a dozen polling stations in the 271-Rudauli assembly constituency, and that polling stations 130 and 131 in the East Assembly constituency of Lucknow district had the same voter list, and that approximately 1,100 voters were missing from one polling station.”
Earlier, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had also written to the commission urging to halt the exercise. She opined the deaths of BLOs suggest the exercise has reached a “dangerous” stage.
Multiple petitions have been accepted by the top court, which will hear the Kerala SIR case on Nov 26, and the rest on the first of December.