NEW DELHI, Nov 3: Electors who submitted only Aadhaar cards in response to notices issued for “no mapping” during the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Delhi are facing another round of scrutiny, with booth-level officers (BLOs) across constituencies in the national capital being asked to collect additional documents as proof of Indian citizenship.
Several BLOs claimed that despite submitting field verification reports and undertakings confirming that the electors were eligible and had been living at their addresses for years, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) were directing them to revisit voters and seek additional documents to establish that they were not “Bangladeshi” or “Rohingya.”
The additional scrutiny comes even as more than 94% of the 33.1 lakh cases flagged for notices in the draft electoral roll had been marked for the final rolls in data shared by the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office last week.
Electors who submitted only Aadhaar were being flagged on the ERO and Assistant ERO (AERO) system. It has prompted directions to collect documents from the 11 as prescribed by the Election Commission of India (ECI), BLOs said. This is despite EROs having the option to mark an elector eligible and park the case for inclusion in the final roll if they are satisfied with the BLO’s field report and accompanying undertaking.
“I know these voters for many years, some are very old. They are saying they do not have other documents, not even a bank account, but I will have to revisit them,” a BLO from the Northeast district said.
Another BLO said the instructions on document collection had changed repeatedly, causing confusion. “First, we were told that we could collect any document available and provide our undertaking that the voter was eligible based on our verification report. We were even told that we could scan any paper and upload it and the case would be cleared. We were sceptical but still collected documents. Now that we have followed those instructions, they have changed again,” he said.
The BLO said his ERO called him on Monday after he had completed verification of all his cases and questioned how he could establish that an elector was not “Rohingya” or “Bangladeshi” on the basis of Aadhaar. “I was asked to gather citizenship proof. The voters have been living there for many years, and there are many in my area who never went to school,” he said.
“What is a citizenship proof in this country? I had collected Aadhaar and bank passbook copies, but I have now been asked to seek more documents in a meeting. How many times are we going to ask voters for these things?” another BLO said. In one instance, a voter who had submitted a passport has also been asked to submit documents for re-verification, he added.
Officials, however, denied that any such instructions had been issued, adding that no identification or records of “illegal immigrants” on the electoral roll is being carried. A senior official said while Aadhaar alone was not sufficient, an ERO could still mark an elector eligible if the BLO’s field report was satisfactory.
An ERO said officials had initially been instructed during the enumeration phase to identify foreign nationals on the rolls, but the directions had changed soon afterwards and no such list was being prepared.
(Manas Dasgupta)