On last day of SIR camps in Delhi, BLOs wait, go door to door

At the MCD school in east Delhi’s Chilla village, the Booth Level Officer (BLO) says he has not received even a single Form-6 application to enroll new voters through the day. In New Moti Bagh, the BLO says he visited 42 houses over five hours and got four Form-6 applications. In Sarai Kale Khan village, the BLO waited at the local MCD school “from morning to around noon” with other BLOs, “but no one came” to get enrolled.

Even on the last day of the Election Commission’s special camps being held across Delhi to enrol voters left out of the rolls in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), BLOs mostly found themselves waiting for residents. The few that came forward, they said, were those who wanted help to resolve notices they were issued for not being able to link to the 2002 electoral roll.

Delhi had around 1.45 crore electors before the SIR began. When the draft electoral roll was published on August 31, around 97.5 lakh names were retained, while around 47.5 lakh electors were classified as “uncollectible” after BLOs found them to be ASDD (absent, shifted, deceased or having duplicate entries). So far, only around 4.7 lakh people have applied to be included in the electoral roll through Form-6 applications in Delhi.

Manoj Jeena, who works in a transformer factory in Loni, his wife Meenati and their two daughters had been issued notices for not being able to link themselves to the 2002 electoral roll, when the SIR last happened. “I was a voter then, but I don’t remember any details and whether I was registered in Delhi or my village back then, which is why I did not fill that column,” said Jeena, who had been called by the BLO at Chilla.

The BLO said that there are very few registered addresses in the village. In the electoral rolls, in place of house numbers, most addresses of electors mention just “CV” or “Ch”. “It is nearly impossible to locate electors in this area, that is why we are calling them to camps to resolve their notices,” the BLO said.

On September 29, the Election Commission directed the 20 states and Union Territories where the SIR has been completed to run a “special drive” to enrol voters “left out” of the rolls. The move came days after an investigation by The Indian Express, published on September 23, revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected on record 14 times in 10 months to steps taken by the Commission under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, including adding new voters and deleting names.

In Delhi, such camps were being organised on most weekends, since September 20, at government schools and offices for residents of nearby areas who want their names included in the electoral rolls after being struck off the draft rolls. Today marked the final day of these special camps — although all SIR-related applications can still be filled and submitted till October 30.

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Nineteen-year-old Harsh Kumar, who studies at KCC College in Noida and recently became eligible to vote, was among the few who had come to the Chilla camp to be enrolled as a fresh elector. He has an Aadhaar Card and an electricity bill as proof of date of birth and address. It should have been easy to enrol him.

However, the BLO got stuck at the declaration section that seeks the status of the applicant’s parents vis-a-vis the last SIR. Harsh’s father Vinod was not even in the BLO’s list of electors. The BLO told Harsh to get his father’s Voter ID and, in the meanwhile, started looking for his father’s name in lists of other BLOs. “How many times will we have to come with documents just to get enrolled?” asked Harsh.

Nearly 20 km to the west in New Moti Bagh, where a number of bureaucrats reside, BLO Deepak Grover faced other challenges. “In this area, people don’t come for camps, so we have to go door to door and ask people if anyone wants to get enrolled in the electoral rolls,” he said.

Grover started his morning at 10 am, ringing bells in the GPRA New Moti Bagh, going to every house, every floor and every tower with an introduction and one question: “I have come from the election office. Does anyone want to get enrolled as a voter here?”

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At three houses, staff members told the BLO to go away and come later. At a fourth house, a senior bureaucrat welcomed Grover inside his home as he got a Form-6 filled for his daughter-in-law.

At Sarai Kale Khan village, BLO Mukesh Chand Meena had to handle both the special camps and house-to-house visits. “I had even called some people who had been issued notices, but they told me they wouldn’t come,” he said. He is tired after months of BLO work. “I don’t know when this will get over,” Meena said, as he packed up his stationery and got ready for house-to-house visits. By the evening, he was able to resolve around five notices and conduct verification of one Form-6 applicant.