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Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at a press conference on August 17, dismissed allegations against the Election Commission of India (ECI) and asked Rahul Gandhi to submit his complaints in a sworn affidavit within seven days or apologise to the nation.
He also addressed concerns over lakhs of voters in Bihar whose house numbers were marked as zero during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), saying it was the norm when such numbers had not been allotted by the local administration.
Newslaundry had reported that at least 2.92 lakh voters in Bihar have their house number as ‘0’, ‘00’ and ‘000’. Later, RJD supremo Tejashwi Yadav had flagged the report in a press conference. Gyanesh Kumar’s explanation, however, contradicts what the Office of Bihar Chief Electoral Officer told Newslaundry. They said these entries were a mistake in the SIR process and needed rectification. Former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi also questioned Gyanesh Kumar’s explanation.
“Do you know that in our country, crores of people have a zero number in front of their address? Why? Because the panchayat or municipality where they live has not assigned it a number. In cities, there are unauthorised colonies where there is no house number. So what are they supposed to fill in their forms?” Gyanesh Kumar said.
The CEC held the press conference on the day the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and other partners of the INDIA bloc kicked off 16-day-long ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’ in poll-bound Bihar.
“The instructions from the Election Commission say that if there is any voter in this country under such circumstances, the Election Commission stands with them and will assign them a notional number, because when entered into the computer, it accepts zero. This does not mean that they are not voters,” he said.
Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Ashok Priyadarshi had explained that at times, when voters don’t fill in their house numbers, the ECI website still accepts such enrolment applications and that’s why the default value for the house number is shown ‘0’. “But after ground verification, the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) add proper addresses, which has not happened in the case of Bihar SIR because no changes related to addresses have been made in the draft voter lists,” he added.
When Newslaundry pointed out that there are over 2.92 lakh such voters, he said that they will look into it and will rectify the “error”.
The latest (2023) guidelines to prepare electoral rolls also confirms the same. It specifically notes “incomplete” address “like mentioning street name but not the house number” while registering a voter raises doubts whether the applicant is genuine. The guidelines say that in this case a BLO will ascertain this in field inquiry and the correct-complete address should be recorded on the application.
Importantly, the manual does not mention guidelines to provide notional house numbers to voters with incomplete addresses.
It is only mentioned as a footnote in the 19-page-long instructions by ECI on Bihar’s SIR on June 24. The instruction does not include house number in a mandatory category for electors, and says that “where no House No as given by the Panchayat/Municipal Authorities is available, the notional number will be given in the roll. In such cases, it will be invariably indicated that the House no. is notional.”
Newslaundry asked senior officers at the commission if there are any guidelines on how house numbers should be allocated, to which they replied, “there are no such guidelines on how a booth level officer should allocate notional house numbers. Whether the numbering should start from 0 or 1.”
Gyanesh Kumar also tried to reason the issue using the example of homeless voters. He said, “There are people who don’t have a home… you all are fortunate. Many people don’t have a house, but their name is still there in the voter list. And what address is given for them? The place where that person goes to sleep at night. Sometimes by the roadside, sometimes under a bridge, sometimes beside a lamp post.”
The 2023 manual on electoral rolls has guidelines to register a homeless voter. It says those who do not possess any documentary proof of ordinary residence are eligible for enrolment in electoral roll, provided they are ordinarily residing there. And in such cases, the BLO will visit the address given in Form 6 for more than one night to ascertain that the homeless person actually sleeps at the given place.
SY Quraishi, a former chief election commissioner of India, said, “It is true that there are no guidelines to BLOs to allot notional house numbers, that too as zero. And I have never come across voters with house number zeros. This shows that if such a mistake has slipped into voter rolls after SIR, then there would be other mistakes as well. It is clear that even for a homeless voter, the address has to be specific. If a homeless voter sleeps outside a shop, then the address of that shop will become his address. Because tomorrow if you have to delete or verify this voter, where will you go looking for voters with house number zero. Where will you find them?”
Proper traceable addresses are important in voter rolls for several reasons. One of them is intimating the voter through a notice via postal services before the name is deleted from the rolls. If the commission does not receive a response to that notice, it goes ahead with its decision to delete the elector.
For the same reason, Newslaundry had earlier pointed out that untraceable or ambiguous addresses have become a huge challenge for the commission itself. In Meerut, when we had found that two booths had 27 percent fake voters, Navdeep Rinwa, Chief Electoral Officer of UP, had said, “There is no clear SOP by the Election Commission of India to delete such voters. If a voter’s full address is not entered at the time of registration, it becomes a huge problem at the time of deletion. Because how will the BLOs conduct their house-to-house verification and where will we send notices informing them about deletion of their vote? And such voters with incomplete addresses is a widespread problem in urban areas and is not just limited to Meerut.”