BENGALURU: Preparations are underway in Karnataka for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and it would be taken up once the Election Commission of India (ECI) announces the dates for the state, Chief Electoral Officer-Karnataka V Anbu Kumar has said. Speaking at a media workshop organised in Bengaluru on Wednesday, he said the preparations for SIR in Karnataka have been going on for the past one month.
“As part of it, training to 58,000 Block Level Officers in cities and villages will be completed by September 23 and we are ready to go ahead with SIR after the ECI announces the dates,” he said.
Anbu Kumar said the exercise is intended to ensure that no eligible voters were left out and no ineligible voters were added. “The last SIR will serve as the cut-off date, and the data will be used for reference.
The last SIR was in 2002 in Karnataka. The electoral rolls, after the previous SIR (2002), are already published on EC’s website,” he said, adding there were 3.4 crore voters in 2002, which is 5.4 crore now, and they will be matching the present 2025 data with that of the 2002 data to identify any discrepancies.
“BLOs will be visiting voters door-to-door, carrying two pre-filled enumeration forms with unique QR codes, verifying each voter, including their citizenship. Voters have to provide one of the 12 listed documents, including Aadhaar card, to establish their place or date of birth.
After verification, BLO will hand over one enumeration form, which will be signed by him, to the voter as an acknowledgement, and the other will be submitted to the ECI, which will be uploaded on its server,” he said.
He said signing the declaration form is mandatory and warned that criminal cases can be registered against those providing wrong information. He said those voters with more than one entry will be identified using technology. “If the photo and demographic entries of two voters match up to 65%, they will be identified and verified,” he said.
Post the door-to-door enumeration by BLOs will list out the absentees, dead and migrated, including potential duplicates. Post supervisory checks by the Electoral Registration Officers and the CEO, the draft electoral rolls will be published, inviting claims and objections and post this, the final rolls will be published. He said SIR exercise will be completed in a stipulated time frame and that it will need three months.