State gets ready for SIR to clean up electoral rolls from June 30

Chief Electoral Officer Says No Eligible Voter Will Be ExcludedPune: Maharashtra chief electoral officer S Chockalingam on Wednesday directed election officials to undertake extensive public awareness campaigns and engage with people, elected representatives, social organisations and volunteers to ensure the success of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. He said no eligible voter should be excluded from the rolls under any circumstances.At a review meeting held at the district collectorate, Chockalingam said factual information about the revision exercise should be disseminated through print, electronic and social media platforms and the radio. Helpdesks should be activated to provide information and address citizens’ queries, while meetings should be held to dispel misconceptions and present the facts about the exercise.“The voters’ list must be more accurate, transparent and updated, but citizens should not face any inconvenience during the process. No eligible person should be left out of the electoral roll,” Chockalingam said.He told officials to carefully study Supreme Court judgments relating to citizenship, provisions of the Representation of the People Act and constitutional provisions while undertaking the revision. Ineligible persons should not be included in the electoral roll and names should be deleted only after proper verification.Micro-planning, booth-wise targets and faster voter-list mapping, besides deploying additional manpower from other departments wherever required are planned.Under the SIR exercise, booth-level officers will conduct door-to-door visits between June 30 and July 29 distributing and collecting pre-printed enumeration forms. Voters’ details, including names, addresses, photographs and other particulars, will be verified and updated wherever necessary. Officials will also verify entries categorised as absent, shifted, dead and duplicate.Election officials clarified that voters whose records can be mapped to electoral rolls from 2002-2004 may not be required to submit additional documents. For government employees residing in official accommodation, certification from the public works department will be considered for further action.District collector Jitendra Dudi said Pune district’s electorate had nearly doubled from 46 lakh voters in 2002 to 90.90 lakh in 2026. Around 8,417 BLOs and 4,557 booth-level agents representing various political parties will participate in the exercise.Preparatory work, including voter-list mapping, manpower deployment, training, printing of enumeration forms and arrangements for verification and hearings, has already been completed. Dudi said that the Election Commission would conduct the revision exercise in a fair and transparent manner and reiterated that no eligible voter’s name would be deleted from the electoral rolls.