New Delhi, Oct 7 Amid the political row over Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the Delhi poll body on Wednesday announced special camps for electors left out of the draft roll, including those displaced by recent demolitions and now living at new addresses.
According to the office of the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer, the camps will be held on October 9 and 11 at polling stations across the city, while booth-level officers (BLO) will go door-to-door to identify eligible voters who were left out of the draft roll and help them apply for inclusion through Form 6.
The camps will also cover residents whose colonies have been demolished recently and who have since shifted to new addresses. Such electors have been asked to approach the camp nearest to their new address and apply for inclusion in electoral roll through Form 6.
The issue of displaced voters is crucial in Delhi in view of demolition drives in areas like Bela Estate and Yamuna Bazar, where residents were evicted from their registered addresses. Political parties and civil society groups have raised concerns over the effect of such displacement on inclusion of voters’ names in the revised rolls.
The Election Commission, in its October 1 instructions, told states and Union territories where SIR has been completed to undertake special drives to enrol eligible electors who were left out. In Delhi, BLOs will identify such voters during house-to-house visits and facilitate their enrolment through Form 6.
The Delhi CEO’s office said an elector whose name does not figure in the draft roll can apply for inclusion with the requisite documents during the claims and objections period, which has been extended till October 30. The final electoral roll is scheduled to be published December 4.
“Any eligible elector whose name is not present in the draft electoral roll may file Form 6 along with supporting documents during the claims and objections period for inclusion in the final electoral roll,” the CEO said in a statement.
According to the statement, electors who have shifted residence and were marked absent, shifted, dead and duplicate (ASDD) during the BLOs’ house-to-house verification can also apply through Form 6. The ASDD list has been put up on the Delhi CEO’s website so that people can check whether their names figure in it.
More than 33 lakh electors were issued notices requiring verification of their eligibility.
The poll body is simultaneously trying to expedite verification of voters who made it to the draft roll but received notices during SIR. BLOs are visiting such electors at their homes to collect documents, meaning they do not necessarily have to appear before election officials for a hearing.
As of Wednesday, more than 13.62 lakh cases involving non-mapping and logical discrepancies had been verified on the basis of documents collected from electors, according to the CEO’s office. All notices, claims and objections are to be disposed of by November 30.
The SIR has become a major political flashpoint in Delhi after the draft electoral roll published on August 31 excluded around 47.56 lakh names from the city’s previous electorate of about 1.45 crore. Around 97.5 lakh electors were included in the draft roll.
Delhi has seen over 4.11 lakh Form 6 applications, including nearly 1.99 lakh since publication of the draft roll on August 31. It has also seen more than 3.34 lakh Form 8 applications, which are used, among other purposes, for shifting of residence within or outside a constituency.
(PTI News)
