Congress urges Maharashtra CEO to conduct fair SIR

A Congress party delegation led by party’s state president Harshvardhan Sapkal met the Maharashtra State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) S Chokalingam submitted a memorandum for the implementation of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters’ lists in the state, in the fairest possible manner.

Congress Legislature Party leader Vijay Wadettiwar, Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Naseem Khan, All India Congress Committee (AICC) Secretary and Telangana co-in-charge Sachin Sawant, state general secretary Advocate Sandesh Kondwilkar, state general secretary Abhijit Sapkal, among others were part of the delegation.

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Speaking to media persons after meeting the Maharashtra State Chief Electoral Officer, Harshvardhan Sapkal said, “Complaints are being received that votes of certain castes and religions are being deliberately excluded. In some states, huge scams are seen in the SIR campaign deliberately carried out on the eve of elections. It has been seen that this campaign is being carried out in a way that will benefit only the ruling party. Therefore, the Congress party has demanded in our memorandum that the SIR should be implemented in a fair manner in Maharashtra without any haste”.

“During 2002-04, the SIR process was carried out in Maharashtra over a period of about 13 months. Now, after 25 years, when this process is underway, an increase in the number of voters by three and a half crores must be considered. Since there are no elections in Maharashtra for the next three years, there is no problem even if this process takes one and a half or two years,” he said.

The state Congress president observed that if the process is carried out with sufficient time, there would be no suspicion in the minds of the people. He said the Census and the SIR should not be done by the same officer or employee. Representatives of political parties should be given soft copies, OCR or machine readable formats as well as hard copies of the SIR data. At least one month should be given to register objections to the SIR and to reply to the notice.

“Before excluding a voter’s name, at least seven days’ notice should be given to hear his views. It should be ensured that the BLO does not work under the pressure of any person, organisation or political leader and a special campaign should be launched for BLO registration,” he demanded.

“The data of the entire SIR process should be preserved for at least five years at the ERO and DEO level. Also, this data should be made available to political parties as per their requirements. The Form 7 application should be scrutinised strictly. The list of voters marked as ‘Absent, Migrated or Dead’ (ASD) should be given to recognised political parties at the polling station level on time. Strict care should be taken that there is no process of proving citizenship or implementing NRC through the back door. This process should be limited to voter registration only,” Sapkal added.