Bihar SIR: BLAs struggle with lack of guidance, format making exercise cumbersome

New Delhi: Lack of information on the procedure appears to be acting as a hurdle for Booth Level Agents (BLAs) to submit complaints against inclusions and omissions from the draft electoral rolls prepared after a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, where instances like deletion of names that were in the 2003 voters list has also come to light.

BLAs are submitting claims and objections about the entries in the draft rolls, not in the format prescribed in rules and are not being guided properly by the election officials or volunteers appointed by the Election Commission, party leaders said. They claim that the EC not providing a list of deleted names with reasons for the deletion is making the exercise cumbersome.

Individuals and parties have time till September 1 to submit claims and objections about inclusion or deletion of names. Following the SIR, around 65 lakh of 7.89 crore voters who were in rolls till June 24 have been deleted with the EC saying that is due to deaths, entries in multiple polling stations, permanently shifting out and not being able to locate.

However, parties do not agree. CPI(ML)L on Saturday said that their BLA found the names of 20 members of a farmers' family who were residing in locality covering new booth number 173 in Bahadurpur Assembly constituency in Bihar's Darbhanga district were deleted in the draft rolls.

Of this, BLA-2 Amit Paswan told DH from Darbhanga, two of them -- Moti Lal Yadav and Dhyani Yadav -- were voters in the 2003, which is considered to be base roll for the exercise. "We found them during our examination of the booth level voters' list. All 20 are from a family. The Booth Level Officer never met them but when we asked, he said they did not submit forms," he claimed.

Paswan submitted an application with the District Magistrate on Friday. However, he has not been told about filing it in a prescribed form, he claimed.

An instance of a Panchayat ward member's name being struck out of the rolls has also come to light. Dakshini Harpur (Samastipur) Panchayat member Dipak Kumar told DH that his father Ram Udgar Mahto's name has also been struck out despite both of them submitting the Enumeration Form and receiving submission messages.

"The election official is asking me to fill Form 6, which is for a new elector. They made a mistake and to correct this procedure, I should be allowed to submit Form 8. The official is not willing to accept it," Kumar claimed.

“There is a lot of focus on Form 6. This is a form essentially for new voters applying for electoral enrolment. But in Bihar, all voters whose names have been deleted from the draft rolls are being asked to fill Form 6,” CPI(ML)L General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said.

Bhattacharya asked, "why can't the EC put up the draft voter rolls, especially the names of deleted voters specifying grounds for deletion -- death, permanent migration, duplication or untraceability -- in every panchayat for all to see? If correction of errors is what the EC wants, then it must ensure transparency and easy accessibility."

N Sai Balaji of CPI(ML)L said the concerned officials who are receiving the complaints are not guiding voters and BLAs to apply in the prescribed format, instead giving a receipt of the application and doing nothing. The volunteers who are assigned to BLAs are also not helpful, he claimed.