New Delhi: After the deadline for filing claims for inclusion in the electoral rolls under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls was extended, the election officials Friday said that the ongoing reverification of the 47.6 lakh voters deleted from the draft SIR roll would also continue till Nov 25. ECI has extended the deadline for filing claims and objections till Nov 25 from the earlier deadline of Oct 30.
The reverification of 47.6 lakh deleted voters started on Oct 16. “The booth-level officers were supposed to continue their door-to-door verification of voters classified as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate (ASDD) till Oct 30. Now that the dates for filing claims and objections have been extended till Nov 25, BLOs have got more time to revisit all the registered addresses of the ASDD voters and see if there is any eligible voter left out of the draft roll, and get them fill form 6 (for inclusion),” said an official. The official added that the number of ASDD voters who have been contacted till now is yet to be compiled from across nearly 15,000 booths. The draft SIR roll, published on Aug 31, contained around 97.5 lakh voters against 1.45 crore on the electoral rolls when the revision began on June 30. The names of 47.6 lakh voters were deleted after they failed to return enumeration forms during the house-to-house exercise.
The reverification exercise is aimed at identifying genuine voters who may have been wrongly excluded from the draft rolls and giving them an opportunity to seek inclusion in the final electoral roll.
Only around 2.75 lakh people have submitted Form 6 since the publication of the draft rolls even though, according to election officials, around 1 lakh special camps across 14,947 polling stations have been held between Sept 20 and Oct 25. These camps received 36,305 applications, including 25,255 Form 6 applications.