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Bhopal, Nov 4 (IANS) Madhya Pradesh Congress on Tuesday accused the Election Commission of India (ECI), claiming that the Special Intensive Review (SIR) has started in the state without preparation.
The Congress justified its allegations on the ECI and claimed that most of the booth level officers (BLOs) appointed to conduct the SIR exercise have not yet reached the booths located in remote areas of Madhya Pradesh.
Former minister Sajjan Singh Verma said, “BLOs were supposed to start door-to-door distribution of election forms from today (Tuesday), but this could not be done. It has been observed that at many places BLOs have been sent without election forms, which shows that the ECI was not fully prepared for the SIR.”
Verma, who has been appointed as the head of the eight-member Congress panel to look after the SIR process in the state, speaking to IANS on Tuesday, said the Congress is fully prepared for the SIR exercise in every district and booth in Madhya Pradesh.
The Congress leader told IANS, “The way this SIR exercise started on Tuesday clearly shows that the Election Commission was not fully prepared for it. Congress has appointed its teams in every district and booths to keep a close watch on the BLOs.”
After training more than 65,000 BLOs, who have been assigned the task of going door-to-door for voter verification, they have started visiting their assigned booths.
Madhya Pradesh has a total of 230 assembly seats and 29 Lok Sabha constituencies in 55 districts divided into six divisions namely Bhopal, Gwalior, Indore, Jabalpur, Chambal, Narmadapuram, Rewa, Sagar, Shahdol and Ujjain.
The voter list in Madhya Pradesh had already been frozen after the SIR was announced in the state by the ECI on October 27, which means no new changes can be made without verification from the ECI-appointed BLO.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Sanjeev Jha has directed district collectors, commissioners and other senior officials to closely monitor the SIR process and ensure that not a single eligible voter is left out of verification.
CEO Jha shared that the BLOs will not ask for any documents from the eligible voters, they will only have to distribute the forms and record the information obtained during the door-to-door visits.
However, the CEO also clarified that BLOs will collect documents only if the voter’s record does not match with the earlier database.
In such cases, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) will issue a notice asking for the documents separately.
–IANS
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