Maharashtra’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls faces renewed pressure after activists sought an extension of the November 13 deadline, saying election officials may not have enough time to trace and assist 2.07 crore voters marked as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate in the draft rolls.
The demand followed a fresh direction from the Election Commission of India (ECI) asking poll officials to display booth-wise lists of these electors and make efforts to contact those who may have been excluded. Booth-level officers have been instructed to facilitate the filing of the required forms with electoral registration officers or assistant electoral registration officers.
Under the current schedule, voters can submit Form 6 for inclusion, Form 7 for objections and Form 8 for corrections until November 13. The revised SIR schedule sets November 25 as the last date for disposing of claims and objections. The final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on November 30.
Activist Ulka Mahajan said officials would need to locate excluded voters, inform them that their names were missing and help them complete the necessary process within a few days. “Completing these steps within the remaining few days will be difficult, particularly for the electors who are unaware that their names have been left out. So, we want an extension of the claims and objections deadline,” she said, according to the Times of India.
The ECI’s fresh instruction does not specify a new timeline for officials to complete the tracing exercise or for identified voters to approach the authorities. A senior election official told the newspaper that the timeline for the exercise would be decided separately.
The gap between identifying voters and enabling them to respond is central to the dispute. A booth-wise list can indicate which names have been classified under the ASDD categories, but voters still need to know about their exclusion, access the appropriate form and submit it to the relevant election authority before the claims process closes.
Mahajan said the new exercise would have limited value unless the deadline was extended. She also said activists would prefer the SIR process to be withdrawn. Citizen Madhur Pai raised a separate concern about repeated revisions, saying they created confusion for residents and added to the workload of election officials, who would also be required to undertake the Census exercise.
The ECI’s direction gives genuine electors another opportunity to seek inclusion in the final roll, but the operational details of the exercise remain to be settled. The immediate milestones are the November 13 deadline for claims, objections and corrections, the November 25 deadline for disposal of submissions and the planned publication of the final electoral roll on November 30.
