Mumbai : Maharashtra Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) S Chockalingam sought greater discretion for local election officials using the poll body’s ECINet software. The ECINet is the poll panel’s centralised digital platform for managing electoral rolls and other election-related functions. In a September 24 letter to senior EC officials, Chockalingam sought five changes to ECINet, each aimed at allowing Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to exercise powers that they already have under election law.
The EC has since partly addressed the issues. It decided that voters flagged for “logical discrepancies” would not have to appear personally for hearings in such cases, and that Booth Level Officers (BLOs) could collect documents from their homes and upload them on ECINet.
One of Chockalingam’s requests was for an option allowing EROs to exempt voters from personal hearings when they have submitted valid and satisfactory documents. He sought an additional option for voters to submit documents other than the 13 listed in SIR notices, noting that people from tribal, homeless and sex-worker communities may not have documents on the indicative list, The Indian Express reported.
Chockalingam demanded that uploading an “Extract of Last SIR” be made optional in discrepancy cases, since the system has already identified the mismatch using the previous SIR roll, according to the report. The CEO additionally sought FAQs and written instructions for EROs, saying they have “number of queries” about the process and that oral instructions from the ECI or CEO are insufficient. The FAQs, he said, should cover notices, document submission, hearings and disposal of cases, the Express report said.
The SIR exercise began in June last year and has led to over 13 crore names being deleted from the draft voter rolls in 30 states and Union Territories so far. Following a meeting of the full commission on September 26, the EC announced decisions that addressed some of the concerns around the SIR process.
The EC said electors flagged for logical discrepancies would not have to appear personally for hearings in such cases, with BLOs instead collecting documents from their homes and uploading them on ECINet. It also said further flexibility would be provided to field officers wherever required.
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