Bengaluru, 17 September

The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) has urged the Chief Electoral Officer to conduct an immediate statewide review of alleged discrepancies during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

In a representation, KPCC Media and Communication Department Chairman and MLC Ramesh Babu cited a constituency Part No 512 of Yeshwanthpur Constituency (No 153), where around 62 per cent of the voters have been left out of the roll following the SIR exercise. 

Providing a breakdown, he stated that 1,016 voters were listed and enumeration forms were received and uploaded for 654 voters, while four forms were not submitted. As many as 339 voters were reported permanently shifted and 19 as deceased, while 265 were reportedly unmapped with the last SIR.

Hence, only 389 voters were considered valid, accounting for around 38 per cent of the electorate in the polling part. 

“KPCC is concerned that similar difficulties are being reported from various parts of Karnataka,” Babu stated. He detailed problems such as enumeration forms not being received, collected or properly accounted for, eligible voters being shown as unmapped with the previous SIR records, voters being  ategorized as permanently shifted without adequate verification, deceased-voter classifications requiring confirmation, inconsistencies between the original electoral roll, enumeration records and the revised status of voters,

Babu also flagged difficulties faced by voters in obtaining information about the status of entries and BLOs, AEROs and EROs not responding to grievances. 

The Congress’ demands included conduct an immediate statewide review, obtain polling-part-wise statistics, a special verification of unmapped voters, establish grievance redressal mechanism and provide adequate time for corrections.