The Election Commission on Friday asked district election officers (DEOs), who are district magistrates, to complete the hearings of all voters with logical discrepancies in their enumeration forms and to upload the documents collected from them within the next seven days.
The EC also made it clear that all the cases that would be disposed of by AEROs and EROs would be “super checked” by DEOs, roll observers and the chief electoral officer (CEO).
The development, sources said, hinted that the EC was gearing up to complete the special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter list within the stipulated time.
“A total of 1.51 crore voters, including 32 lakh unmapped voters, were supposed to be called for hearings. Heraings of about 1.30 crore voters have been completed. It is expected that all pending hearings will be completed in seven days, and this is why the EC fixed the seven-day deadline,” said a source on the poll panel.
According to the existing schedule, the hearings of voters will be completed by February 7, and the final electoral rolls will be published on February 14.
A senior EC official, however, said it was not certain if all documents would be uploaded on time.
“Even though hearings of about 1.30 crore voters were completed, documents of only 60 lakh voters were uploaded so far. This is happening only because a section of the EROs and the AEROs was holding back the documents of the voters who could not furnish certificates specified by the EC,” said an official.
Top EC officials held a meeting on Friday with the CEO, electoral roll observers and special roll observers, where a series of instructions was given to complete the exercise on time.
The EC set a clear schedule to complete the exercise on time. According to the schedule, all pending notices should be generated by 5pm on January 31 and the same should be served by 5pm on February 1. The hearings of the remaining voters and the uploading of documents submitted by them should be completed in the next seven days.
Pending documents of the voters, whose hearings have already been completed, will have to be uploaded by February 2.
The EC has also mentioned that all micro observers deployed at hearings centres would be withdrawn within the next two-three days and they would be posted to assist the electoral roll observers in the districts concerned.
A source said that by deploying the micro observers to assist the electoral roll observers, the EC made it clear that it would now focus on “super checking” of the cases that were or would be disposed of by the EROs and AEROs.
“The super checking means the senior officers will check whether the cases disposed of by the EROs and AEROs were based on proper documents that were specified by the EC,” said a source.