DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has produced a set of startling figures, including more than 40,000 voters reportedly missing from their registered addresses and one individual filing 5,906 objections in a single Assembly constituency.
The scale and concentration of the objections have presented the Election Commission with a difficult verification challenge amid concerns that the process could be misused to target particular groups of voters.
According to an analytical report prepared by the election authorities, 59,604 objections have been filed through Form 10 across the state. More than 90 per cent of these originated in the districts in the plain.
The largest category comprises 40,906 voters who were either not found at their registered addresses during verification or were reported to have permanently shifted elsewhere.
This accounts for nearly 69 per cent of all objections.
Separately, complaints were filed against 2,575 voters on the specific ground that they had permanently relocated. Election Commission sources said the principal objective of the SIR was to make electoral rolls accurate and error-free.
"Merely finding a person absent from home cannot constitute sufficient grounds for deletion," officials pointed out.
The Congress has alleged that the exercise is being used to target Muslim voters and those perceived to support the Opposition.
“BJP workers are filing objections against Muslim voters and Congress-linked voters so that their names can be removed from the electoral rolls,” Congress leader Amendra Bisht told TNIE. The most striking case has emerged from the Kichha Assembly constituency, where 8,767 objections — the highest for any constituency in Uttarakhand — have been registered.
Of these, 5,906 were filed by one person, identified in the report as Rajesh Tiwari. His objections alone account for nearly 10 per cent of the 59,604 objections received across the State and more than two-thirds of those filed in Kichha.
Bisht claimed that Tiwari was functioning as the BJP’s Booth Level Agent in the constituency and was deliberately objecting to voters identified as Congress supporters.
Haldwani recorded the second-highest number of objections at 7,312, followed by Jaspur with 6,720. Kashipur reported 5,704 objections, Rudrapur 4,958, Gadarpur 4,785, Jhabrera 2,333, Sitarganj 1,612, Bajpur 1,475 and Haridwar Rural 1,400.
The figures show that most objections have emerged from the plains, particularly Assembly constituencies in Udham Singh Nagar and Haridwar districts.
Of the total, 14,358 objections concern people allegedly already enrolled as voters. Another 2,575 cite permanent relocation, 804 deaths, 143 underage status and 205 non-Indian citizenship. In 607 cases, no clear reason was recorded.
Additional Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Kumar Jogdande clarified that an objection does not automatically lead to deletion from the electoral roll.
Both the person filing the objection and the voter against whom it has been raised are allowed to present their case before a decision is taken.
Meanwhile, the BJP has countered the Congress’s allegations of irregularities.
State BJP spokesperson Mathura Joshi told TNIE, "Congress was raising such claims to appease a particular community, while the Election Commission was supervising the exercise and proceeding in accordance with the rules."