State, ECI head for showdown over special voter roll revision

Bengaluru: While Karnataka's chief electoral officer (CEO) prepares to launch the special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter list in April, a fresh state-Union govt confrontation is brewing since the State Election Commission (SEC) is conducting its own parallel revision exercise. The SEC is scheduled to issue final electoral rolls by March 31. The Siddaramaiah cabinet last week asked law and parliamentary affairs minister HK Patil to study legal and political implications of SIR and submit a report. Patil is expected to present his findings by March 10, while the cabinet is scheduled to deliberate on the issue on Thursday (Feb 26).
"Our study will cover both constitutional provisions and political aspects linked to SIR," said Patil. "We will examine the political intent of BJP-led Centre and how they are conducting SIR. We will recommend remedial measures to ensure transparency of the process and to conserve its integrity. We will also examine whether SIR amounts to duplication of the process since SEC would have revised the electoral rolls by then." Rizwan Arshad, MLA, said the state govt will oppose SIR as "the Election Commission of India (ECI) has lost credibility". "People have lost trust in ECI over the way additions and deletions were done in the guise of SIR in other states," Rizwan said. "The process is highly biased towards BJP. While the cabinet-appointed panel is studying the issue, we will appeal to the Centre to drop SIR and explore ways of moving court if our plea is unanswered." However, the CEO's office, which functions under ECI, is moving at speed to roll out SIR. Officials said preparatory work is underway, with 69% of house mapping completed. In Sept last year, the state cabinet amended rules to allow SEC to independently revise electoral rolls for the first time in Karnataka, with the final list scheduled to be notified by March 31. The move is seen as an attempt by the govt to counter SIR, leading to an unusual situation where two authorities are revising the same voter list simultaneously. However, CEO V Anbukkumar: "We are not concerned with political rhetoric. The SIR we are conducting is a routine exercise." He said this was the ninth SIR exercise, with the last one conducted in 2002. "The special summary revision (SSR) which is held annually is normally based on requests by voters, whereas an SIR involves scrutiny of every voter," Anbukkumar said. Meanwhile, a delegation of Congress legislators led by deputy CM DK Shivakumar raised concerns over discrepancies in the SEC-led revision, especially in Greater Bengaluru. The delegation urged state election commissioner GS Sangreshi to ensure voters are mapped street-wise and house-wise. "There are some instances where the members of the same households are divided into two booths. This is because of a decision to increase the number of voters per booth from 1,200 to 1,500. We have requested the SEC to take appropriate steps to address this," Rizwan said.