The Election Commission has extended the deadline by a week to February 14 for the Special Intensive Revision Program being run to ‘clean’ the voter lists in 12 states and union territories. This decision has come at a time when there is a possibility of a big uproar on this issue during the winter session of Parliament starting tomorrow.
For how long has the deadline been extended?
The Election Commission, in its three-page order, said it has given poll officials one more week’s time to publish the draft list of voters.
Earlier, the counting of voter list was to end on December 4 and the draft list was to be released on December 9. Now the counting will end on December 11, the draft list will be published on December 16, and the final voter list will be released on February 14.
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Why was the deadline extended?
Leaders of Trinamool Congress and other opposition parties had recently met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and demanded rescheduling of the SIR process. He had requested the Commission to plan this work in a better way.
This demand comes amid reports that there is a lot of pressure on Booth Level Officers (BLOs) as they have to complete this huge task of going door-to-door in a tight schedule.
There have also been reports of suicides of BLOs from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Elections are to be held in West Bengal early next year.
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How many names will be removed?
EC has increased the estimated number of voters to be removed from the draft list under the SIR exercise. According to news agency IANS, this new estimated figure is around 35 lakh. In this figure of 35 lakh, those 18.70 lakh voters (who have died), duplicate voters, voters who cannot be traced and those voters who have permanently migrated to different states are included.