Over 4L hearings held on notices issued for discrepancies in forms

New Delhi, Sept. 29 -- The Delhi poll body has conducted more than four lakh hearings for voters issued notices over "unmapped with previous SIR" and other "discrepancies" during the ongoing revision of electoral rolls, officials said on Tuesday.

According to the office of the Delhi chief electoral officer (CEO), 4,01,670 such hearings have been conducted so far.

The draft electoral roll published on August 31 had over 97 lakh electors, of whom 33.13 lakh were issued notices over "discrepancies" in their enumeration forms, including cases where their details could not be matched

with the electoral roll prepared during the previous SIR in 2002.

The poll body reiterated that the issuance of a notice did not mean that an elector's name would be deleted from the electoral roll, adding that the voters would be allowed to submit documents and respond to the notices.

"No name will be deleted from the draft electoral roll without following due process. The concerned persons will be allowed to present their case and to appeal," the CEO's office said.

It added that disposal of notices would be carried out within the prescribed schedule and the final electoral roll would be published after the completion of the process.

To make the process easier for voters, booth-level officers (BLOs) have now been asked to visit the homes of those issued notices in unmapped and logical discrepancy cases and collect the required documents.

The documents will be uploaded on the ECINET portal and placed before the electoral registration officer (ERO) for a decision, the CEO's office said, adding that such voters would not have to appear for a hearing before the ERO or the assistant ERO's office.

"Only in exceptional circumstances, as decided by the ERO, the hearing will be held preferably online," it said.

Several prominent voters, including former deputy prime minister L K Advani, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, Election Commissioner S S Sandhu and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, had also received notices.

Officials said the details of most of these voters had been validated through field verification and

their names reserved for inclusion in the final electoral roll.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.