The Election Commission of India will meet the Chief Electoral Officers of the states and Union Territories on Wednesday to review preparations for the nationwide rollout of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The Commission may decide on the launch of the exercise after the meeting, reported The Indian Express. Along with SIR preparations, officials are expected to discuss other administrative matters.
The meeting will take place at the EC’s India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management (IIIDEM) in Dwarka. This is the second such gathering in just over a month. The first meeting was held on September 10, when Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumarand Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi met the CEOs to check on readiness for the SIR.
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Background: What the SIR involves
The SIR is different from the usual annual or pre-election Special Summary Revision (SSR) that the EC has conducted for the past 20 years. Unlike the SSR, the SIR creates electoral rolls from scratch. On June 24, the EC ordered an SIR to start in Bihar, as state elections were approaching, and said it would issue instructions for other states and UTs later.
Under this order, all 7.89 crore registered voters in Bihar were required to submit new forms by July 25 to appear in the draft roll published on August 1. Voters added after 2003, the year of the last intensive revision in Bihar, needed to provide proof of their date and place of birth. Those born after July 1, 1987, also had to submit documents about their parents, in line with the Citizenship Act, 1955.
The Election Commission of India suggested 11 documents, including passports, birth certificates, and caste certificates. Commonly held documents like Aadhaar, Voter ID, and ration cards were initially not included. In Bihar, 65 lakh names were removed from the draft rolls, with another 3.66 lakh deleted in the final version.
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Legal challenges and Supreme Court directions
Several petitions have challenged the June 24 order in the Supreme Court, arguing it resembles a National Register of Citizens. The Court has directed the EC to accept Aadhaar as the 12th document and to publish the names of people removed from the rolls along with reasons for deletion.
In the last meeting with the state CEOs, the EC asked officials to match as many voters as possible to the last intensive revision rolls to reduce the number of people needing to submit documents. |
