Political turmoil is going on in the country regarding Special Intensive Revision of Voter List or SIR and meanwhile, the Election Commission has intensified its special campaign to include the left out eligible voters in the list. According to the Commission, in the first four days of this campaign being run in 20 states, about eight lakh people have filed Form-6. The special thing is that a large number of these are said to be those youth who have recently completed 18 years of age and have applied for the right to vote for the first time.
That is, during the time when the SIR process was going on, many young voters could not be included in the list due to not being of age. However, it is not yet clear how many people are there among these eight lakh applications, whose names were removed from the voter list during SIR.
One month special campaign in 20 states
The Election Commission has launched a special drive in all 20 states to add eligible people left out during SIR to the voter list and to ascertain the status of names already deleted. For this, about five lakh booth level officers i.e. BLOs have been fielded. The Commission has directed the officials not to limit themselves only to taking the applications of new voters, but also to reach out to those who were included in the list earlier and who were removed later.
Under this campaign, booth level officers have been targeted to contact about 20 to 25 people every week whose names were left out of the voter list during the SIR process. Besides, such youth and other eligible citizens, who have now become eligible to vote, are also being encouraged to apply.
What does the figure of eight lakh Form-6 tell?
The filing of nearly eight lakh Form-6 in four days shows the initial pace of the Election Commission's campaign. A large number of these are 18-year-old citizens who have become voters for the first time or who have recently completed 18 years. This also means that many people who did not meet the age eligibility at the time of SIR are now getting a chance to be included in the voter list through the new process.
However, this data cannot be directly considered as the return of those voters whose names are being alleged to have been removed during SIR. The Commission has not yet put forward separate figures as to how many of the eight lakh applications are new voters and how many are those who were in the list earlier.
Commission's big exercise amid allegations of removal of 13 crore names
Allegations have been made by the opposition parties regarding SIR that about 13 crore names have been removed from the voter list. On the other hand, the Election Commission says that in the process of cleaning the list, a large number of names came to light which remained in the list due to reasons like death, permanent transfer, unavailability or duplicate entries.
According to the Commission, cases related to about three crore dead voters, six crore permanently transferred people, three crore voters who were not found available and about one crore duplicate entries were reported. Now through a special campaign the Commission is trying to ensure that no eligible citizen is left out of the voter list.
The political debate on SIR may be ongoing, but the initial figure of eight lakh Form-6s indicates that the process of adding people left out in the voter list is also progressing rapidly. Now the focus will be on how many new names are added by the Commission after the completion of the campaign and how many are re-confirmed among the previously removed names.