The Election Commission has asked electoral registration officers (EROs) and assistant EROs (AEROs) to write down specific reasons in case they don’t agree with the observations of roll observers or micro-observers who flag cases uploaded to the system without proper documents before approving such cases for inclusion in the final voter list.
A senior EC official said the EROs and the AEROs had been asked to specify the reasons within 500 characters in ERONET, where the cases were being uploaded after hearings. The EC was forced to issue the directive because several ineligible voters’ documents were approved for their enrolment in the final roll.
“It was found that many cases — flagged by roll observers or micro-observers because of a lack of documents specified by the EC — were approved for inclusion in the voter list without citing specific reasons. The EC would not allow it for the sake of error-free electoral rolls in Bengal,” said the official.
According to the existing system, the documents submitted by the voters during the hearings as part of the SIR drive were uploaded to the ERONET. Once the documents are uploaded, the district election officers (DEOs) verify them. Once the verification process is complete, the micro observers and the roll observers draw the attention of the EROs and the AEROs to the cases without specified documents. The EROs and AEROs would have to dispose of the cases, considering the issues flagged by the micro observers or the roll observers.
Approvals by the EROs and AEROs have been pending for the inclusion of more than 20 lakh voters’ names in the electoral list, following roll observers’ and micro-observers’ reports of discrepancies in the documents submitted by these electors during hearings. The EC kept a close watch on these cases to ensure no ineligible cases made it to the final rolls.
Recently, the top brass of the EC had raised the issue with the DEOs, pointing out that cases with improper documents, including blank pages and newspaper cuttings, were being uploaded to the system and approved by the EROS and AEROs.
But despite the warning, sources said, the EROS and AEROs were approving cases for inclusion in the final rolls without mandatory documents.
“They were writing reasons like ‘documents verified by DEO hence approved’, ‘document found physically but not uploaded, hence approved or ‘heard & satisfied, hence approved’. They actually are not justifying their act. This is why they have been asked to write proper reasons,” said another official.
Sources on the poll panel said the cases without required documents would not be included in the final rolls until the EROs and AEROs made solid arguments for their approval.
“Now, the EC is giving them a fair chance to justify their stand for approving cases flagged by the roll observers or micro observers in the final rolls. If they write vague reasons to approve flagged cases, those could be deleted during the super checking by the poll panel,” said a source.
Seven AEROs have already been suspended directly by the EC in Bengal for approving ineligible cases for the final rolls.