Chennai: The Election Commission has assured the Madras High Court that no one needs to worry about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls and that the exercise will be carried out better than expected.
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), an exercise to update voter lists by the Election Commission, will begin on Tuesday in nine states and three union territories. Satyanarayanan, a former AIADMK MLA from the T. Nagar constituency, had filed an application with the Election Commission seeking the removal of the names of deceased, migrant, ineligible, and duplicate voters from the electoral rolls for the T. Nagar and Tambaram constituencies. However, the Election Commission appears to have taken no action on the application.
A petition was filed in the Madras High Court by former MLA Satyanarayanan and AIADMK lawyer Vinayagam, seeking an order for the Election Commission to consider the application.
The petition came up for hearing today before a bench comprising Chief Justice MM Srivastava and Justice Arul Murugan. At that time, Niranjan Rajagopal, representing the Election Commission, stated that special revisions to the voter list are carried out every year in January. It is common for special revisions to be carried out before every election. On October 27th, the Election Commission issued a notification regarding the implementation of special revision works in 12 states, including Tamil Nadu. Based on this, the special revision works will begin tomorrow (November 4th).
Through these works, the entire voter list will be revised. Forms will be given to each voter, the completed forms will be verified, and based on the special revision works, a draft voter list will be published on December 9th. At that time, objections to the draft list will be available, and the final voter list will be published only after the objections have been accepted and fully considered.
Furthermore, the lawyer representing the Election Commission stated that special revisions have been conducted 10 times since 1950. In Tamil Nadu, special revisions are now being conducted after 20 years, between 2002 and 2005. “No one needs to fear the special, in-depth revision of the voter list. These works will be carried out better than expected.”
The Election Commission’s lawyer also pointed out that a case filed by former minister M.R. Vijayabhaskar seeking the removal of deceased persons from the voter list for the Karur Assembly constituency is pending. The judges who recorded these arguments ordered that all cases filed in this regard be heard on November 13th.
