SIR exercise adds 5,000 polling booths in Kerala; excluded voters to get notice

Thiruvananthapuram: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise has resulted in the creation of 5,000 new polling booths across Kerala, with the draft electoral roll published after incorporating these additions. Officials have also indicated that 27 more booths may be added, and Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the new booths are set to be appointed shortly.

BLOs to serve notices
Booth Level Officers will personally serve notices to voters who are required to appear for hearings due to incomplete or defective details in the SIR enumeration forms. The notices will clearly specify the discrepancies or shortcomings identified. While a copy of the notice will be handed over to the voter, the original—duly acknowledged with the voter’s signature—will be submitted to the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) through the designated mobile app by each BLO.

When voters appear before the ERO on the scheduled date, the concerned BLO must be present. If errors have occurred in mapping details in the enumeration forms due to lapses on the part of BLOs or because of software-related issues, BLOs have been instructed to rectify them. This corrective process is expected to be completed within the week. To facilitate these procedures, the duty-off period of BLOs has been extended until January 22.

For the hearing process, around 1,000 officials have been deployed, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said. This includes EROs from 140 Assembly constituencies and 145 Assistant EROs.

Youth enrolment gap remains a challenge
It is estimated that nearly 40 per cent of young people aged between 18 and 30 in the state are yet to be enrolled in the electoral roll. This emerged from an assessment conducted by the CEO’s office. At present, around 54 to 56 lakh voters on the rolls belong to this age group.

No further extension of time
Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India has responded to a letter from the state government pointing out shortcomings in the SIR process, stating that the deadline for submitting enumeration forms had already been extended twice and that no further extension would be granted.

Addressing allegations that more than half the voters had been removed in some polling booths, the CEO said at a press conference on Tuesday that BLOs had visited households up to three times and made every possible effort to distribute and collect the forms, adding that there were no lapses on their part. He also dismissed complaints regarding the exclusion of certain prominent individuals, including former MLA Rajuji Mathew, terming them baseless, and said clarifications had already been provided to those concerned.

42.74 lakh voters excluded in Madhya Pradesh
Apart from Kerala, draft electoral rolls based on the SIR have also been published in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. According to the Election Commission of India, 42.74 lakh voters in Madhya Pradesh, 27 lakh in Chhattisgarh, and 64,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been excluded from the draft rolls.

Sharp drop in voter numbers in BJP strongholds
In Kerala, the publication of the SIR draft rolls in Palakkad and Thrissur districts revealed that the highest number of exclusions occurred in constituencies where the BJP had performed strongly in last year’s Lok Sabha elections. In the Palakkad Assembly constituency, where the BJP finished second, 23,507 voters were removed from the rolls, including 15,922 classified as untraceable—the highest such figure in the district. In Malampuzha, where the BJP secured second place in the previous Assembly elections, 29,039 voters were excluded, of whom 10,027 were untraceable.

In Thrissur district, constituencies where the BJP emerged on top recorded the following exclusions: Ollur (30,346), Thrissur (28,883), Nattika (22,983), Irinjalakuda (17,912), Puthukkad (18,489), and Manalur (19,573).