With a nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls imminent, the Samajwadi Party has started gearing up for the exercise in Uttar Pradesh, with instructions going out to ensure that a 10-member committee and two Booth Level Agents are in place and active at every booth.
Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has held meetings with leaders, including the SP’s in-charges and observers for Assembly constituencies, to impress on them the need to keep an eye on booth-level activities.
On September 15, SP state president Shyam Lal Pal dispatched a letter to district and city presidents of the party on the SIR and how the party should prepare for it. The letter pointed out that Booth Level Officers of the Election Commission would be going door to door with the voter list of that booth to verify the identities of those on the list, and that the names of the deceased or permanently transferred, or who can’t be traced or whose names figure more than once would be removed.
The letter adds that the eligibility date of the SIR would be January 1, 2026, with all those 18 or above by then to be included. Those who don’t figure in UP’s 2003 voter lists – when the last intensive revision of electoral rolls was done in the state – would have to furnish extra evidence, while the immediate reference voter list for the exercise would be the one published on January 7, 2025.
Speaking about Akhilesh’s message to SP leaders, a party source said: “What happens is that some leaders leave the party, or are not active anymore. Hence, the booth committees are sometimes inactive. Now the party has told us we must ensure this is not the case. In most places, 10-member booth committees are already in place, but the local level leadership is revising them.”
Incidentally, last month, amidst the row over the SIR exercise in Bihar being conducted months before the Assembly polls, Akhilesh had distributed copies of affidavits purportedly filed by the SP with the EC, alleging large-scale voter deletions and irregularities during the 2022 Assembly polls. Akhilesh had alleged voter deletions in a targeted manner against certain communities.
Over the last few years, the SP has also been consistently demanding rollback of EVMs and a return to ballot paper for elections.
The SP hopes to have its mechanism in place for the SIR by the time the panchayat elections are held in UP at the beginning of 2027.
On June 24, the EC passed an order for a national SIR of electoral rolls, in which all registered electors would have to fill new enumeration forms, and those added to the rolls after the last intensive revision would have to submit eligibility documents as well.
The Indian Express reported that Chief Electoral Officers of states and Union Territories could hold meetings with political parties before the national rollout – something which was not done in case of the Bihar SIR.
