NEW DELHI: The Election Commission on Thursday asked 22 states and union territories including Delhi to complete the preparatory work related to the Special Intensified Review (SIR) as soon as possible as they are “expected to begin the exercise from April”.Once the exercise is completed, all states and UTs will be covered.In a letter to the chief election officials of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Ladakh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura and Telangana, Uttarakhand, the poll body said the All India SIR voter list was requested in June last year.In the face of “Korean vote” allegations leveled by the opposition Congress, the Election Commission held a secret report on electoral rolls in 13 states and UTs and a “special audit” in Assam this year. A similar exercise is scheduled to be held in the remaining 22 states and union territories this year.While this process, which has kept the EC in the news, has been completed in Bihar, it is ongoing in 12 states and UTs with nearly 60 crore voters.The remaining 40 crore voters will be covered in these 17 states and five union states.
In Assam, a “Special Review”, rather than an SIR, was completed on 10 February.Due to a variety of reasons, the SIR in the nine states and three UTs has witnessed frequent change in schedules.As in Bihar, political parties have filed applications in the Supreme Court challenging the SIR Act in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.Recently, TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee personally defended before a bench of the Chief Justice of India against the process of cleaning poll rolls in her state.While the EC was preparing for the SIR operation in Bihar, its officials claimed that several citizens from Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar were found by its grassroots level staff.But in the end, the polling body did not share any numbers or proof of those people who were not eligible to be on the voter list.Opposition parties have termed the EC’s allegations as a ploy to implement SIR to target voters not aligned with the BJP and its allies.
