Social workers call out SIR procedural lapses

Bengaluru

Social workers and volunteers working to guide citizens through the SIR process have highlighted several major lapses in the conducting of the revision process by the government. Syed Khaleel, a former advocate who has been working to guide citizens through the process, spoke about three major issues on how the SIR has unfolded in the city over the last three days.“Nothing is being done as it is supposed to be.

I saw that in Pulakeshinagar, which is a huge area of several lakhs people, the citizens don’t have documents for the SIR, many are uneducated and don’t know what to do. It is clear that about 12% of such an area could be removed from the voter rolls," Khaleel said. Reports have also come of politically connected area bigwigs handling the process with BLOs by having people come to them at a certain location and filling their forms like temples, mosques and marriage halls with BLOs not doing door-to-door visits. After the BLO visits the houses they are also supposed to paste stickers.

Citizens have also complained about errors in the 2002 voter roll which seems to have been handwritten on some pages of the printed pages. In several instances, the pages don’t seem to be consecutive such as in one place where 407 jumps to 443 data. “A lot of people are calling in for guidance. About 10 to 30 a day. The problem they are facing is that the forms are in Kannada and a lot of people can’t read Kannada, so people are finding it hard to fill.

However, we are guiding them to fill the forms in English as that is also acceptable,” said Sirajuddin, a volunteer at an SIR helpline. Khaleel also said that while the Booth Level Agents, who have been appointed by political parties are supposed to work with BLOs, only those of BJP are accompanying the workers, and no Congress BLAs are taken.

Citizens have also stated that they have received Enumeration Forms from BLOs at their homes and have been trying to fill them. However, due to these issues in the non-availability of their past data, they are finding it difficult.