Hyderabad:City poll officials have covered 41 per cent of the electorate as part of the pre-SIR (special intensive revision) mapping exercise, even as all the mainstream political parties, except the All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen, have failed to involve their booth level workers in the routine yet controversial voter verification exercise.
The Congress has been highly critical of the SIR, and accuses the Bharatiya Janata Party of forcing the deletion of voters, particularly among Muslims, but has neglected the pre-SIR exercise and has not even furnished the list of booth-wise agents to the Election Commission. So is the case with the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
“We saw the bitter experience that the Muslims and other minority voters faced in West Bengal and we are sure of the BJP attempting to repeat it in Telangana,” said a senior MIM leader, explaining the massive awareness programme launched by the party in the city and Hyderabad Lok Sabha segment in particular.
It was only in recent times that the Congress and BRS initiated the process of appointing polling station-wise agents. “Identification of voters and their place of residence becomes easy if political party representatives play an active role, because they have micro-level knowledge of the voters,” a senior official told Deccan Chronicle.
The pre-SIR exercise has been primarily focusing on mapping the electoral list as on January 1, 2025, with that of 2002 when the last SIR was conducted. The mapping would mean verifying the name of the voter in both the lists, and with that of their parents if their (voters) names did not figure in the previous list.
The common experience of the booth-level officers (BLOs) has been that voters aged above 40 years did not have issues as their names were getting traced either in the same constituency or others in case of migration.
“Those who registered as voters after 2002 will be mapped with their parents,” said K. Chandrakala, additional commissioner, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, who is in-charge of SIR here. Allaying fears over the exercise, she said it was a routine exercise which would help remove duplication and the names of dead and bogus voters.
While the pre-SIR exercise dragged on for months and only 21 per cent of the electorate could be covered till a month ago, it gained momentum after Chandrakala over as AC (elections) and coverage was doubled. The officials were of the view that another 20 per cent voters will be mapped by the time the actual SIR process begins from June 25.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
