SIR in Tamil Nadu.
Credit: E.T.B. Sivapriyan/DH photo
Chennai: 65-year-old MP Natarajan was meticulously jotting down every detail -- name of the voter, EPIC number, booth number, and even party affiliation -- in a yellow-coloured notebook prominently displaying Chief Minister M K Stalin’s image.
Natarajan, a Booth Level Agent (BLA 2) of the ruling DMK in the Velachery assembly constituency, was assisting voters in filling out their Enumeration Forms (EF) for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls at an election help desk set up in Kumara Raja Muthaiah Higher Secondary School in Adyar.
As Natarajan explained his job to this DH correspondent, he kept pausing the conversation to take calls from his senior functionaries to update them about the number of EFs submitted since the morning. “Not just me. All 69,000 BLAs of our party have to pen down every detail of the elector. We were trained to handle the exercise,” Natarajan told DH.
The DMK party worker had at his fingertips details of the booth he was in charge of, as he had reached out to households in the area just a few months back as part of the Oraniyil Tamil Nadu campaign to familiarize people with the welfare measures of the Stalin government.
Six kilometres away, in Teynampet, AIADMK BLA 2 Harikrishnan filled out about a dozen EFs in about 30 minutes and handed them over to the Booth Level Officer (BLO). He doesn't keep a notebook like his DMK counterpart, but the AIADMK cadre is also mandated to give an update to his district unit by the end of the day.
For the record, the DMK opposes SIR, and the AIADMK supports it.
How do the BLAs help the BLOs?
Natarajan and Harikrishnan are just two of the thousands of BLAs from the Dravidian majors who are working tirelessly on the ground to monitor SIR and ensure that people don’t get disenfranchised. The strong booth presence of the Dravidian parties is one of the reasons for their continuous dominance in Tamil Nadu politics.
Though the BLAs of the two parties often break into arguments over a slew of issues very often, their presence is a huge support for the overworked BLOs.
“They help us find details of the voters and fill the form themselves, which makes our work easier. They know the area and people better than us,” a BLO told DH on condition of anonymity.
DH’s field visit to about a dozen election help desks in Chennai showed that the DMK appears well-prepared with its trained booth agents and ground-level campaign; the AIADMK, though active on the ground, does not seem as ready for SIR. DMK BLAs were present in every booth DH visited, but that was not the case with their AIADMK counterparts.
DMK’s planning for SIR and launching a helpline
The DMK has upped the game and began preparations long ago to ward off challenges not just from AIADMK but also from new players like Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) of actor Vijay, who is popular among young voters.
Stalin himself has been calling DMK BLAs randomly and seeking updates from them on the exercise, attaching utmost importance despite the party challenging SIR legally and politically.
“My leader (M. K. Stalin) foresaw the conduct of SIR in June when it was announced in Bihar. He then directed me to prepare our BLAs for SIR. I travelled to all 72 party districts and gave a PowerPoint presentation on the process. We educated all the BLAs through our IT and legal wings,” N R Elango, Rajya Sabha MP and Secretary of the DMK Legal Wing, told DH.
Since SIRs conducted in 2002 and 2005 are the baseline years for the exercise, the district units were directed to print electoral rolls of those years and hand them over to BLAs to ease their work.
The party is involving about 4,500 advocates from its legal wing to handle complaints during SIR on the ground and redress them. “We have appointed two advocates for each assembly segment and one advocate for every 15 booths. We might oppose the exercise, but we also want to be prepared to handle it on the ground,” Elango said.
Besides, the DMK runs a helpline at its headquarters exclusively to help people fill the forms and get their doubts cleared, receiving about 150 visitors in person and between 500-600 calls every day. “Most calls we receive are about the difficulty in filling the forms and finding 2002/2005 SIR details. We send a report to the party chief every day on the number of visits and calls and the status of their complaints,” he added.
How well is the AIADMK prepared?
On the AIADMK side, its legal wing secretary I S Inbadurai, a Rajya Sabha MP, said they have issued instructions to their BLAs through district secretaries to closely monitor the exercise and report any discrepancies. However, no special training has been provided for them.
“The DMK is aggressive on the ground because they fear SIR. We are active on the ground without any aggression. This may look like we are not present on the ground, but we are,” he added.
He said the AIADMK BLAs have also been asked to ensure that the BLOs don’t get influenced by local DMK men. “We have asked to check for double entries and ensure that the dead are removed. We are informing the ECI about deaths and shifts. We are also taking up issues. And our BLAs send reports to their district functionaries who then send them to the headquarters,” he added.
‘We fear 30 per cent EFs may not be digitised’
While blaming the ECI for the “hasty manner” in which the SIR was being executed, Elango also said since the work, which has to be undertaken over several months, is being done in just 30 days, he expects only 70 percent of the forms to be digitized by December 4 if the deadline is not extended.
“This will mean about 30 percent of the voters may have to file Form 6 to enroll as new voters. The real work of the BLAs will begin after December 8 when the draft electoral rolls will be released. We will have to find genuine voters who have been left out and help them register. It is a tedious process, but we have adequately trained our cadre,” he added.