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A group of activists in Telangana monitoring the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise have flagged several concerns with the notice phase. The draft electoral roll for Telangana was published on August 17, and the period for issuing notices began immediately and will continue until November 5. The final electoral roll will be published on November 11.
In a representation to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Telangana Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) C Sudharshan Reddy, the activists said there was a lack of transparency in the SIR notices and hearings. They said there was no mechanism to check the current status of those who had been issued notices, and that notices were being issued without the application of mind in cases involving ‘logical discrepancies’.
People across Telangana have started receiving notices for different reasons, such as non-mapping with the 2002 SIR, name mismatch, father’s or mother’s name mismatch, or unusual age differences flagged as logical discrepancies. Those who receive such notices have been asked to appear for hearings along with the required documents. The Election Commission also has an option to submit documents online in response to the notices.
The letter noted that most of the SIR notices have given vague reasons such as “not mapped”, “name mismatched”, “father’s name mismatched”, “age difference”, etc., without providing precise details about the nature of the mismatch or discrepancy. Without exact information, people may not know what exactly they are required to prove, the activists said. They also said there must be a separate, clear list of documents or evidence required for each category.
They also said that those who appear for the hearings do not have access to the details uploaded by the Booth Level Officer (BLO) on the ECI’s app, and have no way to track whether their documents have been accepted. This leaves people uncertain and requires them to wait for the final electoral roll to be published to know whether they have been excluded because of an unsatisfactory submission, while leaving them with no chance to rectify any issues, the letter said.
The activists said that notices over ‘logical discrepancies’ appeared to have been automatically generated through the ECI’s ERONET app without any verification by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) or other officials.
“A minor variation in spelling, relationship description or age should ordinarily be rectified after verification, rather than treating the voter as doubtful and forcing the voter to prove an error made by a [data-entry] operator,” the letter said.
The activists demanded that the ECI issue clear notices with the exact details of the discrepancy, provide access to the status of the document verification process after people respond to the notices, give people an opportunity for rectification in case of any issues, and have the ERO verify automatically generated notices for ‘logical discrepancies’.
They also asked the Telangana CEO to publish daily constituency-wise statistics showing the number of notices issued, the number of people who attended hearings, and the number of people whose claims were approved or rejected.
The representation was signed by several activists, including SQ Masood of ASEEM, Meera Sanghamitra from the National Alliance of People’s Movements, Mary Dias of Voter Rights Forum, Telangana, Shaik Salauddin of the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union, MA Mujeeb Ayyub of Adalah (Access to Justice Network), academic Padmaja Shaw, writer and activist K Sajaya, and others.