More than half of electorate in most states may not have to give any document in SIR: EC officials

New Delhi: More than half the electorate in most of the states may not have to provide any document as they will be covered in the electoral roll of the last special intensive revision (SIR) held in their states, Election Commission officials said on Wednesday. They pointed out that most states had the last special intensive revision of the voters' list between 2002 and 2004. That year will be considered their cutoff date for the next SIR. The Election Commission will soon decide on the date to roll out special intensive revision pan-India, and the exercise to clean up the voter list across states may take place before the end of the year, officials had earlier said.

Chief electoral officers have been told to keep the electoral rolls of their states, published after the previous SIR, ready. Some state CEOs have already put up the voter list published after their last SIR on their websites. The website of the Delhi CEO has the 2008 voter list when the last intensive revision took place in the national capital. In Uttarakhand, the last SIR took place in 2006, and that year's electoral roll is now on the state CEO website. The last SIR in states will serve as the cut-off date, just as the 2003 voter list of Bihar is being used by the EC for intensive revision. According to the instructions issued by the poll authority to its Bihar poll machinery, the 4.96 crore voters -- 60 per cent of the total electors -- who were listed in the 2003 special intensive revision need not submit any supporting document to establish their date or place of birth, except the relevant portion of the electoral roll brought out after the revision. The other three crore -- nearly 40 per cent -- will have to provide one of the 12 listed documents to establish their place or date of birth.

An additional 'declaration form' has been introduced for a category of applicants seeking to become electors or shifting from outside the state. They will have to give an undertaking that they were born in India before July 1, 1987, and provide any document establishing the date of birth and/or place of birth. One of the options listed in the declaration form is that they were born in India between July 1, 1987 and December 2, 2004. Such people will also have to submit documents about the date/place of birth of their parents. The SIR in poll-bound Bihar has come under attack from opposition parties, which questioned the timing of the exercise and claimed that crores of eligible citizens will be denied voting rights for want of documents. The Supreme Court has asked the EC to ensure that no eligible citizen is left behind.