Maharashtra Chief Electoral Officer S Chockalingam has written to the Election Commission seeking four changes to the ECINet software in the notice phase of the SIR. He also requested that the Electoral Registration Officers be allowed to decide cases involving “logical discrepancies” after conducting a hearing, amid the ongoing row over the functioning of the Election Commission.
Maharashtra is currently in the notice phase of the SIR.
The demands were similar to the ones made by the two election commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu regarding the ECINet and the role of the ERO’s. The information was revealed in an Indian Express report last week.
Chockalingam's request asks that the ERO’s be allowed to decide which logical discrepancy cases need a hearing, what documents to accept and which discrepancies they can dispose of themselves.
These discrepancies arise when the ECINet flags difficulties in linking an elector with a parent or grandparent in the electoral rolls. The issues also include differences in a parent's name or discrepancies in age.
The Maharashtra CEO demanded changes in the Software that would allow the EROs more options while processing SIR notices.
The Election Commission has partly responded to similar demands by allowing EROs to exempt people flagged for logical discrepancies from personal hearings on September 26.
The commission also said that several portal upgrades were carried out based on inputs from state CEOs and that further flexibility required by field officers would be made operational.
The latest request by the Maharashtra poll chief echoes recent concerns over the balance between the responsibilities assigned to field-level election officials and the control of the software used for ht electoral roll work.
Maharashtra draft roll had cut about 21.1 per cent of the state's electors. The final roll is due on November 16.
Chocaklingam told NDTC that more than two crore names were deleted from the draft voter list during the SIR process.
