Fresh voter drive in Uttarakhand from Nov 12: CEO holds all-party meet

Nineteen days after releasing the final electoral rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive, Uttarakhand chief electoral officer (CEO) BVRC Purushottam on Thursday said the Special Summary Revision (SSR) for 2027 will begin across Uttarakhand on November 12, with January 1, 2027, as the qualifying date.

At his meeting with representatives of recognised national political parties, Purushottam briefed them on the procedure and schedule for SSR, which is expected to help first-time voters and those deleted by the controversial SIR get back on the roll. He also presented a detailed plan for the First Level Checking (FLC) of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines ahead of state elections early next year, according to a statement by the CEO’s office.

The first-level checking of EVMs and VVPATs will begin across the state on Friday.

Purushottam said his office received 100,744 Form 6 applications, which citizens use to apply for fresh inclusion in the voter list, during a week-long drive from October 12 to 20. Citizens turning 18 on or before January 1, 2027, will be eligible to register during the upcoming revision.

The state’s draft electoral roll will be published on November 12. Claims and objections can be filed between November 12 and December 11, with hearings continuing through December 28. The final electoral roll will be published on January 4, 2027.

To prevent bulk misuse, political representatives were told there would be caps on how many voter objections they can file. An individual objector can submit up to 10 Form 7 applications during the entire claims window, and up to five applications per month during continuous roll updates.

Among others. Rajkumar Purohit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Amendra Bisht of the Congress, Satendra Chopra of the BSP, Shyam Babu Pandey of the Aam Aadmi Party and Anant Akash of the CPI(M) attended Thursday’s meeting.

The final electoral roll for Uttarakhand was published on October 3 after the SIR was completed. The final roll has 7.16 million electors, a net contraction of 10.1% from the roll before the exercise.

The final roll for Uttarakhand has 25,164 or 0.4% more names on it than the draft roll published on July 14, which had 7.13 million electors. It was the result of 129,872 additions and 104,708 deletions after July 14 during the claims and objections phase. The final SIR numbers mean that most deletions under the SIR exercise took place in the draft stage itself, when 827,000 or 10.4% of the 7.96 million pre-SIR electors were deleted from the rolls. These electors were classified as uncollectable or ASDD (Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate).