THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Despite its strong opposition to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the CPM has notably made the most number of claims for inclusion in the voters’ list — 5,678 — followed by the Congress (4,885) and the BJP (3,059), according to data released by the office of the state chief electoral officer.
Despite varying political positions on SIR, all parties were keen to add the names of ‘missing voters’ months ahead of the assembly election, with parties like CPI, IUML, RSP and Kerala Congress (M) also making their contributions towards the same. While none of the parties have retracted from their earlier stand on the same, officials consider this to be positive.
Reiterating that the party has not gone back on its stand that SIR is the BJP-led Union government’s move to create a citizenship register, CPM state committee member M V Jayarajan said that the party actively supported people getting enrolled in SIR to ensure that no eligible person is deprived of their voting right.
“We deployed an online desk to collect the required documents for voters facing issues, which were uploaded to the official website in their presence. Party workers also visited people’s homes to aid them,” he said.
Party sources said senior leaders, including John Brittas and T M Thomas Isaac, have been working to spread awareness about adding names to SIR.Stating that the Congress completed its work related to the SIR way before the deadline, Thiruvananthapuram DCC chief N Sakthan said it is now keen on adding the names of new voters to the rolls.
“KPCC organised training classes on the importance of enrolling people. Even panchayat-level workers of the party have been made aware of this. Though the process was slow in the initial days, we soon picked up pace,” he said.
Sakthan also cited practical difficulties, including a minor change in name leading to confusion among voters, which is being corrected through these practices. Ground-level activities towards this were coordinated by the party’s booth-level agents (BLAs) and booth presidents, he added.
Speaking about the BJP’s efforts, senior leader Kummanam Rajasekharan said that intensive campaigns were taken up to minimise the number of people in the absent-shifted-deceased (ASD) list of voters.