The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday informed the Madras High Court that Tamil Nadu will soon witness a special intensive revision (SIR) of its electoral rolls in preparation for the upcoming assembly elections. The revision process is scheduled to commence next week.
Besides, several other states heading for elections will also undertake similar exercises along the lines of Bihar.
The submission in this regard has been made by the poll body before a bench of the Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan.
EC to consider former AIADMK MLA’s plea during SIR
During the proposed revision, the Election Commission said that it would consider the complaint raised by the petitioner and former AIADMK legislator B Sathyanarayanan. This was stated during the hearing of the case in which a direction was sought for the Election Commission to conduct a complete and transparent re-verification in the 229 booths of the T. Nagar Assembly constituency.
The former AIADMK MLA approached the High Court, alleging that officials in Chennai’s T Nagar constituency had deliberately removed around 13,000 AIADMK supporters from the voter list to benefit the ruling DMK.
In his petition, he pointed out that while the constituency had 2,08,349 registered voters in 1998, the figure had risen by only 36,656 by 2021. He further contended that there was a significant disparity between the area’s population and the number of names listed on the electoral roll.
Meanwhile, the bench accepted the petitioner's request and ordered the poll body to file copies of the order issued by the Supreme Court in the case against the Bihar SIR. The case has been posted for next week.
Bihar SIR
As many as 47 lakh ineligible voters were removed from the electoral roll after SIR in Bihar ahead of polls.
As of June 24, the voter list had 7.89 crore electors. Following the revision, 65 lakh ineligible voters were removed, reducing the total to 7.24 crore in the draft list published on August 1. Subsequently, an additional 3.66 lakh ineligible voters were removed, while 21.53 lakh eligible voters were added. This brought the total number of eligible voters to 7.42 crore in the final list.
