CEO, parties hold first meeting on Delhi SIR after schedule released

Delhi's Chief Electoral Officer held a meeting with representatives of major political parties to discuss the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls ahead of its June 30 roll-out.

The Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Tuesday held the first meeting with representatives of political parties after the announcement of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, sharing information and taking feedback ahead of the exercise's roll-out on June 30.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the BJP, Congress, AAP, BSP, CPM and other political parties. Delhi CEO Ashok Kumar and other officers of the poll body interacted with them.

The political party representatives were given a brief on the whole exercise and their questions were answered. The political parties assured full cooperation for successfully completing the exercise in Delhi, said an officer of the CEO office.

Former South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, who attended the meeting along with advocate Sanket Gupta, said that the BJP believes that the names of all bogus voters, dead voters and infiltrators should be deleted from the voter lists.

He said that the BJP's BLAs will extend all possible support to the CEO's office during the SIR.

Gupta said the emphasis was on ensuring coordination between booth level officers (BLOs) of the poll body and the booth level agents (BLAs) of the parties for the smooth conduct of the SIR.

He said the party had already appointed around 12,600 BLAs for participation in the SIR.

The BLOs will conduct door-to-door surveys from June 30 for verification of Delhi's electoral rolls. They will provide enumeration forms to the voters to be filled and provided to the BLOs for submission.

The CEO office will provide the facility of online submission of completed enumeration forms. BLAs of parties can submit a maximum of 50 filled-out enumeration forms daily, officials said.

Political parties in Delhi have intensified preparations for the SIR by focusing on training their BLAs across nearly 13,000 polling booths in the city.

The Delhi CEO office said the main objective of the SIR is to ensure that ''no eligible citizen is left out while no ineligible person is included in the electoral roll''. The exercise will cover all voters aged 18 years and above by the qualifying date, which is October 1.

Door-to-door visits by BLOs will start from June 30 and conclude on July 29, after which the draft electoral roll will be published on August 5. The final electoral roll after the SIR will be published on October 7.

Delhi Congress president Devender Yadav said that the party was well prepared with the deployment of BLAs at each booth to fight any kind of ''disturbance'' in the SIR.

Rajesh Garg, chairman of the Delhi Congress Booth Management Department, and Sunil Kumar, chairman, Legal and Human Rights Department, participated in the meeting called by the CEO.

The Delhi Congress said since the work of voter mapping had not been completed, special camps should be set up in Delhi and coloured photos of the voter lists should be provided to party BLAs for verification purposes.