The Kerala government on Monday shot a missive to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar seeking the extension of the last date for the filing of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) enumeration forms by at least two weeks. 

In Kerala the SIR enumeration phase had ended on December 18, the updation of the forms was frozen on December 19, and the draft rolls would be published on December 23. The letter written by Chief Secretary A Jayathilak reminded the CEC that the Supreme Court and all major political parties in Kerala had sought an extension of the last date for the submission of enumeration forms. 

On September 18, the Supreme Court had asked the CEC to "sympathetically consider" the requests of Kerala and Uttar Pradesh to extend the deadline.

The Chief Secretary's letter numbered the various anomalies of the SIR process in Kerala. It pointed out that 24,08,503 (twenty four lakh eight thousand five hundred and three) or 8.65 per cent of the 2,78,50,855 (two crore seventy eight lakh fifty thousand eight hundred and fifty five) enumeration forms distributed had been marked as "uncollected enumeration forms". Those who have not returned the enumeration forms will not be included in the Draft SIR list.

After the Special Summary Revision in 2025, Kerala has 2.79 crore voters. "The possibility of lakhs of voters getting disenfranchised looms large," the letter said.

The Chief Secretary's letter named prominent personalities ordinarily resident in Kerala who have not figured in the electoral rolls after the SIR exercise. Thiruvalla MLA and former minister Mathew T Thomas and family, former MLA and CPI leader Rajaji Mathew and family and Kerala's former DGP Ramon Srivastava and family are some of them.

The '24 lakh'-plus missing voters fall under these categories: Absent/Untraceable, Permanently Shifted, Dead, and Those who Appear More than Once. The largest category among these is Permanently Shifted: 8,116,221 (2.93 per cent).

Disputing CEO Kerala Rathan U Kelkar's assertion, the Chief Secretary said that booth-level officers (BLOs) were not able to distribute enumeration forms to all the 2.79 crore eligible voters in Kerala. "The Commission has not published the list of enumeration forms that could not be distributed. The list has not been provided to the political parties either," the letter said. "This information should be immediately made available," the letter added.

It said that the list should be published at the booth and Assembly levels so that political parties and voters who had been removed should be able to examine it and make the necessary amends. 

The letter said that the process of mapping those who were below 18 years at the time of the last SIR in 2002 with their relatives like father and mother was also incomplete. 

"Thousands of citizens who had voted in the 2021 Assembly polls have now been removed from the rolls," the letter said. It also said that in certain booths the number of 'Enumeration Forms Refused' (EF Refused) was "extraordinarily high". This category refers to families that have refused to accept the enumeration forms from BLOs. 

The letter gave the example of a booth in Thiruvananthapuram's Sreevarahom where the number under the 'EF Refused' was 704. "Given that the maximum number of voters in a booth is usually below 1200, more than half of them shown as not accepting the enumeration forms is "extremely abnormal". "There is the high possibility of the existence of more such booths with an abnormally high number under the 'EF Refused' category in Kerala. The CEC should examine this matter seriously," the letter said.

It is in this context of a spate of anomalies that the Kerala Government had sought an extension of the deadline.