Article: The revised electoral rolls of Raichur have seen a reduction of 3,21,396 persons after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Election Commission of India. With 13,93,163 persons in the fresh draft, roughly one in every five persons in the old list has disappeared. The final list will be published on October 27 after resolving any claims and objections. Source: The Hindu
Calling this kind of exclusion a ‘cleaning’ exercise would make light of its democratic implications. Each of the people unjustly excluded from the process needs to once again prove something that the state had already granted them as their right to vote. The categories of people left out by the ECI are absentee, moved, dead, duplicate or “other”. But, this requires individual grounds for exclusion, notices before the fact and proper verification. Raichur district SIR portal
The Raichur district has villages, migrant laborers and daily wage earners who may face problems with documentation and navigating websites or visiting government offices. It takes more than a one month period for claiming back one’s right that has been wrongfully taken away through enumeration errors. ECI must give booth-wise information, category-wise number of deletions and must see to it that no one is deleted without any notice to him or her.
But the BJP too deserves mention in this regard. Karnataka BJP leaders themselves pointed out any possible wrongdoing in the SIR when they believed there was interference by the Congress. They must adopt the same criteria for exclusion on such a scale in Raichur without using the issue of election fairness politically. The News Minute
The 3.21 lakh names are not mere statistics but rights of citizens to take part in politics. If the ECI does not bring back all the eligible voters and the BJP demands security measures instead of selective inquiry, the Raichur SIR will become a cautionary tale.
