People checking their names in the draft electoral rolls. (Pic used for representational purpose)
Credit: PTI Photo
Bengaluru: Going by the revised schedule of the State Election Commission (SEC), the draft electoral rolls – with names of eligible voters for the upcoming elections to the five municipal corporations of Bengaluru – is expected to be ready on January 19.
This also means that the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) has completed 11 of the 19 tasks provided by the commission for the preparation of final electoral rolls.
The commission had revised the schedule late last year after the government increased the number of wards from 368 to 369.
In all, it had set a 110-day deadline to complete the entire process of finalising the voters’ list. Among the tasks that GBA has already completed include: training electoral revision officers, assistant electoral revision officers, identifying voters in the Assembly electoral rolls by visiting only the houses on the edge of the ward boundary line by block level officers (BLOs), e-roll generation, verification of leftout and repeated voters as well as other errors, ward-wise electoral rolls, among others.
The exercise involves the work of 8,972 booth level officers (BLOs), who are mostly teachers working on supervision of revenue officials.
Officials said the exercise is challenging as it requires the BLOs to match the 2025 summary revision rolls with the fresh revision rolls based on new ward delimitation maps that have been created mostly based on inputs from local leaders.
While doing so, the boundary marks are not important enough for the demarcation of two wards, it’s learnt, with small lanes being turned into boundaries, instead of proper roads or major drains, etc.
Once the draft electoral rolls is published, there are about seven tasks that need to be completed, including house-to-house verification through BLOs, filing claims and objections, ward-wise electoral roll final checklist and final publication of electoral rolls, which is scheduled on March 13.
Ramachandran R, who is incharge of election-related works in GBA, was not available for comment.