PANAJI
In a set of decisions that come days after the controversy over 97 Goa voters eligible for inclusion but could not be restored to the final electoral roll, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday announced measures to make the voter-verification process more accessible and said that all SIR orders received unanimous consent from all three commissioners.
The ECI said Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will visit the homes of persons issued notices during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) for being unmapped or having logical discrepancies, collect their documents and upload them on ECINET for a decision by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO). Such voters will ordinarily not be required to appear before the ERO/AERO, with hearings to be held online in exceptional cases.
The decision assumes particular relevance in Goa, where 97 voters flagged during SIR for logical discrepancies were subsequently found eligible by election officials but were not included in the final electoral roll published in February.
Goa election officials then sought a software rollback to restore the names, although the facility was not available before publication of the final roll. Goa CEO Sanjay Goel subsequently said many of the 97 had been enrolled through house-to-house processing, while the remaining cases were being processed.
On Saturday, the ECI was informed that 81 of 97 Goa voters left out during the SIR have already submitted Form 6, while BLOs are directed to make house-to-house visits to collect forms from the remaining voters.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission on Saturday asserted that all SIR orders received unanimous consent from all three Commissioners and that the updates to Form 6 for voter enrolment were upheld by the Supreme Court, as it sought to address issues at the centre of a raging row over decision-making in the poll panel and concerns over exclusion of voters from the rolls.
After its first meeting following reports claiming differences between Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the two Election Commissioners, the poll panel said in a statement that the letters sent by commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi to the Cabinet Secretary pertained to an officer on deputation, rather than policy or IT division matters.
While the BJP and its allies claimed that the EC's statement had allayed misconceptions and exposed the Congress'' allegations “built around a manufactured lie”, the principal opposition dubbed it as a “damage control” exercise by the EC and said that nothing short of CEC Kumar's resignation or prosecution will suffice.
The Indian Express had reported that Sandhu and Joshi wrote separately to Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan after issuance of a work allocation order within the poll body that “threatened to concentrate the powers” at the EC centrally to add or delete names and update records in the voters'' list rather than allowing officials at the state level.
In the statement on Saturday, the Election Commission (EC) clarified that the work redistribution orders issued by the officer concerned were never implemented following directions from the two Commissioners.
