SIR begins in Karnataka today: What voters need to know

Starting Wednesday, June 30, a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls will be carried out in Karnataka, where 5.54 crore voters, spread across 34 electoral districts in the state, will be verified. The exercise is being carried out after a 24-year-gap — the last SIR was conducted in 2002.

On the heels of the SIR exercise, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had begun a mapping of legacy and current electoral rolls earlier this year. The total electors mapped by freezing the electoral rolls on June 16 is 5.08 crore, leaving 46.53 lakh voters under the unmapped category. The number of unmapped voters could change. “The mapping will continue until July,” Karnataka Chief Election Commissioner V Anbu Kumar told reporters on Monday.

The four electoral districts of the Bengaluru Urban revenue district have the highest number of unmapped voters. In BBMP South district, 6.23 lakh voters are unmapped; BBMP Central 4.92 lakh; BBMP North 5.79 lakh and the Bangalore Urban electoral district 7.65 lakh voters are unmapped. In 17 of the 34 electoral districts, the percentage of voters mapped exceeded 95 per cent, the highest being Kodagu with 98.68 per cent.

What next?

From June 30 to July 29, 59,050 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will carry out house-to-house visits to distribute enumeration forms to all electors whose names were present on the voter rolls as on June 16. According to ECI, BLOs will visit every household within their assigned polling at least three times for the collection of enumeration forms.

While most of the BLOs are ‘C’ category state government employees such as Anganwadi workers and teachers, around 500 central government employees have also been roped in, according to sources. For the 8,000-odd BLOs required in Bengaluru Urban district, around 400-500 will be central government employees.

BLO facilitation centres

All electors will have to submit the enumeration forms within the prescribed period. If enumeration forms are not received, they will not be included in the draft electoral roll. The forms will be digitised by the BLOs. At areas with poor internet connectivity, BLO facilitation centres are set up at the taluk level.

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This apart, one voter facilitation centre will be operational at the Assembly constituency level in the city limits and gram panchayat level in rural areas.

“If a voter is not mapped but has his/her name in the electoral rolls, the person can visit the centre to get it rectified,” Anbukumar said.

Are documents required now?

At present, voters need not submit documents to the BLOs. They are required if the ECI issues a notice based on discrepancies.

There are six types of discrepancies: Unusually high number of children, implausible age gap (a difference of less than 15 years or more than 50 years between parent and child); sibling birth intervals (a gap of less than nine months between birth dates of siblings); parental name mismatches caused by spelling variations, and gender and name mismatch where the person’s gender does not align with the name and details provided in the previous rolls.

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“Only during such discrepancies will the Electoral Registration Officer serve notices… A notice is just a communication. Every notice may not lead to deletion,” Anbukumar said.

What happens if your name is not in draft roll?

If a name is absent in the draft roll, the voter can furnish one of the 11 documents listed by the ECI for inclusion. This is during the notice phase between August 5 and October 3.

The identity card of any centre or state public sector undertakings (PSUs) where the voter was employed or pensioner’s ID of the PSU, birth certificate, passport, SSLC or degree certificates issued by recognised institutions, permanent resident certificate issued by competent authorities, forest rights certificate and caste certificate are among the documents.

How have political parties reacted?

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The ruling Congress has remained cautious about the exercise. Industries Minister M B Patil has alleged that SIR was being used to help BJP in 97 of the 224 Assembly segments of Karnataka. The party has set up SIR monitoring committees at various levels, as it watched the exercise closely.

Leaders such as KPCC president B K Hariprasad have called upon Congress workers to treat SIR as a “second independence movement”, so as to ensure that eligible voters are not removed from the list.