The Electoral Commission deleted nearly 6 million names within a year of the launch of SIR | Today’s news
The Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls, which has so far led to the deletion of nearly six million voters, has completed one year, news agency PTI reported on June 26.
The exercise, which has sparked outrage between the opposition and the Election Commission, continues in nineteen states and Union Territories, with the Supreme Court upholding its constitutional validity.
The SIR pilot exercise began in Bihar on June 24 last year, ahead of the assembly.
After the Bihar SIR, its voter list was truncated by nearly 65 lakh people due to allegations by the opposition and activists that the electoral body was working at the behest of the BJP to disenfranchise citizens due to lack of documents.
In March, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutional validity of the EC’s move to implement the SIR.
Individuals whose names have been cleared during the SIR are excluded from state welfare benefits in West Bengal and Bihar. After the recent elections to the Land Assembly, both governments announced that the electoral roll purge data was linked to social security.
SIR is now part of the NCERT social science textbook and describes it as an exercise to ensure that no eligible citizen is left out and no ineligible person is included in the electoral roll.
In the second phase of the exercise—announced on October 27 last year—in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Goa, the total voter roll was reduced by 10 percent.
The voter base before the electoral roll was cleaned in these states and Union territories amounted to more than 50.99 million crowns.
After the exercise, the electoral roll stands at 45.81 million, a drop of over 5.18 million. In percentage terms, voter lists decreased by 10.2 percent.
As many as 66,88,636 deceased voters have been removed from the roll, with a maximum of 25.47 lakh from Uttar Pradesh, followed by 24.16 lakh from constituency West Bengal.
Besides, 63.16 lakh names were removed after objections and decisions during the SIR exercise.
The final rolls for the 12 states and Union territories were released on various dates, p Uttar Pradesh as the last person to publish the data.
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Election Commission’s move to implement the SIR.
The third phase of SIR in 16 states and three Union Territories – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana and Uttarakhand, Uttarakhand and Nagar Territory, National Capital Havela and Capital Territory of Dadra and Nagara and Diu – comprising 36.73 million voters, was announced on May 14 and will end later this year.
