SIR drive begins in MP, political parties keep a close watch on exercise

Bhopal, Nov 4 (IANS) The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a much-debated exercise for the verification of electoral rolls being conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI), officially began in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday.

After getting training, over 65,000 BLOs (Booth Level Officers), who have been tasked with conducting a door-to-door visit for verification of voters, have started reaching their assigned booths.

Madhya Pradesh has a total of 230 Assembly seats and 29 Lok Sabha constituencies spread across the 55 districts, divided into six divisions such as Bhopal, Gwalior, Indore, Jabalpur, Chambal, Narmadapuram, Rewa, Sagar, Shahdol, and Ujjain.

The voter list in Madhya Pradesh was already frozen after the ECI on October 27 announced the SIR in the state, which means no new changes can be made without verification from the BLO appointed by the ECI.

Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Madhya Pradesh, Sanjeev Jha, has instructed district collectors, commissioner and other senior officials to monitor the SIR process closely and ensure that not a single eligible electorate is missed from verification.

Sanjeev Jha has shared that the BLOs will not seek any documents from eligible voters; they are supposed to just distribute forms and record the information received during door-to-door visits.

However, the CEO also clarified that BLOs will only collect documents in case the voter's record does not match the earlier database. In such cases, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) will issue a notice to seek documents separately.

Meanwhile, the political parties, especially the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress, have also set up their own teams to keep a close watch during the exercise in Madhya Pradesh.

State Congress has formed an eight-member committee, comprising former minister Sajjan Singh Verma as chairman and seven members, including JP Dhanopia, Sanjay Kale, Rajeev Singh and Shailendra Patel.

On the other hand, the state BJP on Tuesday was scheduled to hold a camp to provide training for party workers assigned for the job for SIR. State BJP chief Hemant Khandelwal and Joint National Secretary will be addressing the training session at the party headquarters in Bhopal.

Notably, the ECI has announced phase two of the SIR in 12 States and Union Territories. Apart from Madhya Pradesh, the 11 States and UTs are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The first phase of the SIR was held in Bihar, following which more than 68 lakh names were deleted from the electoral rolls.

--IANS

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