In Bengal SIR, local officials flag fear of ‘system-driven’ large-scale voter deletions; EROs being bypassed

The EROs are the sole and competent authority to issue notices if they doubt an elector’s eligibility, including citizenship, as per the Representation of the People Act, 1950. However, in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the ECI’s centralised portal has been used to generate notices. The Indian Express had reported on December 16 that EROs across Bihar had found “pre-filled notices” appearing on their individual log-ins on the ECI’s centralised portal. Significantly, while the notices bore the names of the EROs, they had not been generated by them.

An Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) in West Bengal, who did not wish to be named, said notices are generated by the ECI software, and not by the officer concerned. “We have an option/button for notice generation. When we use it, notice is automatically generated. At present, the software generates notices for voters who are not mapped with the 2002 SIR data. Accordingly, notices to these voters are sent. However, in the case of voters with ‘logical discrepancies’ in data, we have no power to decide which elector will be called for a hearing. That will be decided only by the ECI,” the ERO in Nadia district said.

In his letter, Saikat Asraf Ali, General Secretary of the state civil service officers association said, “It is observed that names of electors might be deleted from the electoral roll without the knowledge of the ERO who is the competent authority as per the statute. The common people who will be affected by such action will only blame the ERO without knowing that the ERO has been kept out of the entire deletion process by the Commission.”

When contacted, Ali told this newspaper that the association wants ECI to follow the law and be transparent. “If they make deletions, and what they have done so far, they should clarify to people that the ERO is not responsible for the deletions. Otherwise people will blame us. We also don’t want any genuine elector’s name to be deleted,” he said.

An official in the West Bengal CEO office, however, said detailed instructions were given to all DEOs (District Election Officers), EROs and AEROs in October itself before SIR work commenced in West Bengal. “Why are the officers raising such questions now? Only those electors who have no mapping with 2002 SIR are being served notices to come for hearing. That number is around 31 lakh in West Bengal. After this, ECI will start scrutinising the voters with ‘logical discrepancies’. Then it will be decided by the ECI how those notices will be generated,” the official told The Indian Express.

The officers’ association said while the ECI, as a constitutional authority, reserves the right to issue necessary directions regarding the revision process, “large-scale deletion of entries from the electoral rolls bypassing the mandatory statutory provisions entail a legitimate apprehension that the EROs are being accountable for the act of deletion while they do not have the opportunity to exercise their statutory responsibilities through quasi-judicial hearing”. “Further, the act of system-driven deletion of so many electors all at once appears to infringe upon the natural rights of electors who might well be otherwise eligible under existing provisions of the law yet, for some reasons or other, could not be present during the Enumeration process,” the association wrote in its letter.

“It has been found on the date of the draft publication that a considerable number of electors, whose Enumeration Forms have not been returned on alleged grounds such as death, migration, absence, or duplication, have been deleted from the draft electoral rolls,” the association said.

“Seen against the existing legal provisions as enumerated in the Representation of the People Act, 1950 read with the Electoral Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, it is observed that the law clearly mandates that an elector’s name can be deleted with care on special grounds such as, when ‘the person concerned has ceased to be ordinarily resident in the constituency or that he is otherwise not entitled to be registered in the electoral roll of that constituency’ and also, in all such cases, ‘the electoral registration officer shall give the person concerned a reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of the action proposed to be taken in relation to him’ (Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950). EROs have been assigned an integral role in the entire registration process in this regard,” it said.

West Bengal CEO Agarwal had earlier said in a press conference that the hearings for those who could not be mapped with the electoral roll of the last intensive revision in 2002 would begin first and those with “logical discrepancies” would be studied.

“Some electors fall in multiple categories of discrepancies. So, the unique number of logical discrepancies is 1.36 crore and no mapping numbers stand at 31 lakh, totalling at 1.67 crore. But after analysis, the numbers could change,” he had said.

The WBCS officer’s letter came on the same day that the Election Commission wrote to the CEOs of the 12 states and UTs where the SIR is ongoing, giving fresh instructions to verify all documents submitted by electors with the respective District Election Officers to establish their eligibility within five days – something which was not done in the SIR in Bihar. The Indian Express sent a detailed query to the ECI, which did not respond till the time of writing.

The WBCS officers’ letter concluded, “In view of the above, we request your good office to issue necessary instructions so that the EROs may function with greater clarity in their works and authority commensurate with their statutory responsibilities, considering the fact that the final electoral rolls will be published under his signature and seal alone and under the aegis of Election Commission of India.”