Maha SIR
State election officials on Tuesday said these were suggestions made by the CEO in his letter on Sept 24 to senior deputy election commissioner Maneesh Garg, IT director general Seema Khanna and two ECI secretariat officials. The proposal also cites Para 7.1.1 of Chapter 7 of ECI’s Manual on Electoral Rolls, which requires the ERO to ensure that the electoral roll contains only persons fully eligible for registration, including citizens of India
Officials told TOI that the CEO’s office also proposed to make the submission of an extract of the last SIR roll optional in logical discrepancy cases. Requiring it in every case may not be necessary when the mapping itself has been used to generate the discrepancy, the proposal said. The letter said that earlier provision for exempting electors identified under the category of prominent persons and overseas electors from personal hearing was allowed and the change in the ERO/AERO login would ease the hearing process, state election officials said.
The counsel had also submitted that, in an age-discrepancy case, a sibling’s birth certificate could potentially be sufficient evidence. Another proposal from the CEO’s office sought greater discretion for EROs to dispose of logical discrepancy cases based on BLOs’ statements or panchanamas. It should be sought only when the details in the system differ from the mapping. Chockalingam, when contacted for his comments, was unavailable.
The proposal refers to ECI counsel’s submission before Supreme Court in the Delhi SIR case that the prescribed list of documents is not exhaustive and that any convincing source could be placed before the authority.
The CEO’s letter said that senior citizens, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable electors could face appearing personally for SIR hearings. The letter said this would avoid unnecessary inconvenience and apprehension among electors. Cases involving insufficient, unsatisfactory or missing documents could then be taken up for hearing.
The letter mentioned a provision for exemption from personal hearing that was revised by ECI on Saturday. TOI’ s report on Sunday mentioned the proposal.