‘Upload whatever they give’: AEROs allege pressure to clear SIR notices without hearings

As on October 5, just days before the deadline, at least 39,169 notices were yet to be delivered across the State, while 7,82,304 hearings were pending. | Photo Credit: ALLEN EGENUSE J.

“There is constant pressure every day to show that 100% of hearings have been completed even before the deadline. They (officials) say, upload Aadhaar card, PAN card, whatever a person gives, but finish the process. How unfair is this to those whose documents we previously rejected just because they initially submitted an Aadhaar card?”, an Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) asked, describing how instructions for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) had changed, with officials now putting pressure on them to complete hearings before the deadline, even “without conducting a hearing”.

With the number of pending hearings running into lakhs just days before the deadline, the AEROs said they were being pressured to clear notices even when they knew that a voter did not live at a particular address, to avoid the automatic generation of Form 7 applications seeking deletion.

As on October 5, just days before the deadline, at least 39,169 notices were yet to be delivered across the State, while 7,82,304 hearings were pending. Of these, more than 4.24 lakh were concentrated in Bengaluru alone. The pressure to clear the backlog, the AEROs said, had also changed how documents were being collected and verified. On September 26, the Election Commission of India (ECI) instructed Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to visit households to collect documents for hearings, stating that no physical hearings would be held, but the AEROs said that the BLOs mostly did not visit the houses.