Staff Reporter
Guwahati: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has informed that Special Intensive Revision (SIR) will not be held at present. It will be held in the next phase, which will be announced later. However, the SIR drive will be undertaken in 12 states/Union Territories (UT)s and the electoral rolls of those respective provinces will be locked tonight, said the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Monday.
Regarding Assam, the CEC said, "Under the Citizenship Act, there are separate provisions for Assam, under the supervision of the Supreme Court, the checking of citizenship is about to be completed. The 24th SIR order was for the entire country, under such circumstances, this would not have been applicable for Assam. So, separet e orders for revisions will be issued for Assam.
Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma earlier said that the state will abide by the decision of ECI regarding the SIR. "If the ECI says SIR will be conducted in Assam, we are ready to conduct the exercise, " he said.
Assam, which has seen long-standing concerns over illegal migration and citizenship verification, is expected to have a keen focus on the SIR, once announced.
The CEC said that since Independence, the SIR has been undertaken in the country as many as 8 times, between 1951 to 2004 and the last one took place in 2004. He added that political parties have been repeatedly urging it to conduct voter verification to ensure only legitimate voters participate in the electoral process.
He said that it is essential to clean the electoral rolls after every few years because of reasons like voter duplication, removal of names of those who have either passed away or have permanently shifted out of the poll-bound state.
Explaining the nitty-gritty of the SIR exercise, the CEC said that the enumeration forms will be printed for those states where this will be undertaken and voters' list of those states will be frozen on Monday night. Hinting at a pan-India SIR rollout, he said that it was first undertaken in Bihar and will soon be rolled out in other states.
The SIR exercise will cover Andman and Nocobar Island, Lakshwadeep, Chhatisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
Also Read: ECI to decide: SIR or SSR for Assam Electoral Rolls?