SIR: Where Is the Sanctity of Door-to-Door Verification?

MS Shanker

I have consistently supported the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. As a journalist, I have written numerous editorials defending the exercise because its objective is both legitimate and essential—to remove the names of deceased persons, weed out duplicate entries, identify bogus voters, and detect illegal migrants who have found their way into electoral rolls. A democracy cannot afford compromised voter lists, and any sincere effort to clean them deserves support.

But today, I find myself at the receiving end of the very exercise that I have defended.

The irony is impossible to ignore.

The SIR exercise has begun in Telangana. Yet, despite repeated claims of meticulous “door-to-door verification” by Booth Level Officers (BLOs), not a single election official has visited my residence. If the verification is indeed happening, why was my family completely bypassed?

The confusion does not end there.

Seven members of two families (including my late father-in-law) live under the same roof at 1-20-106, Ravi Nivas, Gokul Nagar, Venkatapuram, Secunderabad – 500015. Logic dictates that all of us should fall under the same polling station. Instead, while two family members have been assigned a polling booth located within walking distance of our residence, five others—including me—have been shifted to a polling booth in Safilguda.

If members of the same household, living at the same address for years, are allotted different polling stations without any rational explanation, one is compelled to ask: What exactly was verified during this so-called intensive revision?

Equally disappointing is the official response when genuine citizens try to help improve the electoral rolls. One of our elderly family members has passed away, and we approached the authorities to have the name deleted from the voter list. Instead of facilitating a simple correction, the response was indifferent and frustrating.

If this is the experience of a journalist who is reasonably familiar with government procedures—and that too a 68-year-old senior citizen—what must be the plight of ordinary citizens, daily wage earners, senior citizens, and illiterate voters who neither understand the procedures nor know where to seek help?

A well-intentioned exercise loses credibility when its implementation becomes falsehood/ mechanical instead of meaningful.

The Election Commission must immediately audit the functioning of its field staff. Door-to-door verification should not become a mere box-ticking exercise performed only on paper. If BLOs are certifying households without actually visiting them, the very sanctity of the SIR exercise comes under question.

Another equally important issue deserves urgent attention. Polling stations should, as far as possible, be located within a one-kilometre radius of every voter’s residence. There is no justification for forcing voters to travel unnecessarily long distances when a polling booth exists virtually in their neighbourhood. Such anomalies discourage voter participation, particularly among senior citizens and persons with disabilities, and can ultimately weaken democratic participation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi often speaks with pride about Bharat’s digital transformation. Indeed, digital governance has simplified countless public services. Electoral roll management, too, should fully leverage technology. Citizens should be able to update, correct and verify their details online with minimal difficulty, while BLOs should merely conduct physical verification to authenticate the information—not create fresh confusion through arbitrary or incomplete verification.

The objective of the SIR is beyond dispute. Clean electoral rolls are indispensable to free and fair elections. But noble intentions alone are not enough. Unless the implementation is transparent, accurate and citizen-friendly, genuine voters will continue to suffer while the very irregularities the exercise seeks to eliminate may remain untouched.

The Election Commission must ensure that honest citizens are not made to run from pillar to post merely to exercise their constitutional right to vote.