Latest news with #ManualonElectoralRolls
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Behind EC's use of ‘notional' house numbers: Inclusion in roll, lack of standardised addresses
Citing the findings of the Congress's internal investigation, Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, had alleged last week that over one lakh votes were 'stolen' in Karnataka's Mahadevapura Assembly segment — part of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat — during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Of these, he said, nearly half involved irregularities in electors' addresses. While the Election Commission (EC) is yet to respond to the charge, the claim spotlights a long-standing challenge for the poll body — the absence of standardised addresses for many voters, and the continued practice of assigning 'notional' house numbers. Gandhi said the Congress analysed the Mahadevapura electoral rolls over six months and found that of 1,00,250 alleged bogus voters, 40,009 had 'fake and invalid addresses' and 10,452 were 'bulk voters' registered at common addresses. Examples included entries with '0' in the address field, non-existent locations and addresses that could not be verified. For much of India's electoral history, the electoral rolls were simple lists with only the elector's name, age, a relative's (father, mother or husband) name, constituency and serial number. While the 'house number' column was there, it was often left blank. Some pages of the rolls from 1980, 1983 and 1988 examined by The Indian Express list only the serial number, name, gender and age in most cases, with house numbers given for some electors. However, some of these house numbers were notional, they were known as 'temporary house number', an official said. The EC began computerising the rolls in 1998 and introduced photo electoral rolls in 2005, according to its 2023 Manual on Electoral Rolls. It was during this shift to digital records that the practice of assigning 'notional' addresses became standard across the board, ensuring that electors without a permanent or well-defined address — or those who left the field blank — were not excluded from the database. The problem of inconsistent or informal addresses goes beyond the drafting or revision of electoral rolls. The Centre has repeatedly acknowledged it as a long-standing challenge – most recently in May, when the Department of Posts, in a policy document, proposed creating a digital public infrastructure to standardise addresses. 'Despite the centrality of address information in everyday life, frictions exist in how such data is managed, shared and used across India,' it noted, citing linguistic diversity, inconsistent formats and fragmented address data. Current and former Election Commission (EC) officials told The Indian Express that over time, when electors either lacked a proper address or left the field blank, they were assigned 'notional' addresses to ensure their inclusion in the rolls. EC instructions dating back to at least 2011 – and reiterated as recently as June 24 for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar — direct that such numbers be allotted and clearly marked as 'notional' in the roll. Identical wording appeared in instructions to Chief Electoral Officers of poll-bound states, including Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana, in May 2023. Officials said the practice exists nationwide, but tends to draw greater attention in urban constituencies with high migrant populations and unplanned settlements. It stems from the Commission's stated philosophy of inclusion, not exclusion, from the electoral roll. For example, in the case of homeless persons, EC guidelines instruct Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to verify the address given in Form 6 at night — checking on more than one occasion — to confirm that the person actually sleeps there. No documentary proof of residence is required if this is established. A 2011 EC training module for BLOs stated that where a municipality has assigned house numbers, those should be used, as they also appear on Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPICs) that double as address proof for other government schemes. Where no official number exists, or the sequence is irregular, BLOs are to assign notional numbers starting from 1 in each section. These numbers, the manual noted, are 'computer generated' and 'not necessarily in consonance with the number allowed by the municipality'. In illegal colonies, municipalities sometimes allot '0' as a house number to avoid conferring legal status, an official said. It is unclear whether this was the case in the addresses Gandhi cited. A former Chief Election Commissioner, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the quality of electoral rolls has improved over the years and a notional address was not an irregularity. Similar objections have surfaced earlier — during the 2023 Telangana Assembly elections, for instance, the BJP flagged voters listed with '0' as their house number. In the most recent draft roll published in Bihar on August 1, the use of notional numbers has continued.
Hindustan Times
7 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Uploaded Bihar draft rolls format under lens
The Election Commission of India (ECI) appeared to have altered the format of at least some parts of the draft electoral roll for Bihar available on its website, replacing a machine-readable version with scanned image files. The draft roll version currently on ECI's website consists of scanned images that cannot be searched via text, are about 7 MB each, and appear to have lower resolution.(Representational Image) The change came to light on Saturday, nine days after it was first published on August 1, following the conclusion of the first phase of the controversial special intensive revision in Bihar last month. When the draft rolls were uploaded on August 1, the files were searchable, text-based PDFs of around 1 MB each (of a single booth in an assembly constituency) with an apparently higher resolution. The version currently on ECI's website consists of scanned images that cannot be searched via text, are about 7 MB each, and appear to have lower resolution. The new format of scanned files generally requires optical character recognition (OCR), which is a more tedious and error-prone way of extracting the text from a PDF file. The change affects both the Voter Services Portal — which allows downloads of voter lists across states in batches of 10 — and a dedicated 'Bihar SIR Draft Roll 2025' site on the Bihar CEO website that hosts assembly constituency-wise zip files. Both now contain scanned images in place of the earlier machine-readable format. Asked about the change, ECI officials said, 'As far as we know these were always scanned images and no change has been made.' HT ascertained the change because it was able to extract the summary table from the draft rolls of 59 ACs on August 1 without using OCR. The non-OCR programmes -- run by HT in two different programming languages; R and Python -- did not work for at least two booths from two different ACs out of the 59 on August 9. HT could not perform the check for all ACs because the changed files are also much larger in size, which is usually the case with image files compared to document-based files. According to ECI's Manual on Electoral Rolls (2023), draft rolls are to be made available on the Chief Electoral Officer's website 'in an Image PDF format' but also 'in a text mode' without photographs — instead indicating whether a photograph is available or not. The development comes in the middle of a public dispute between ECI and the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, over alleged manipulation of electoral rolls. Gandhi on Thursday had alleged that there were 100,250 'stolen' votes in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Bangalore (Central) parliamentary constituency that helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the seat in 2024, accusing ECI of 'colluding' with the ruling party. He also demanded access to electronic voter roll data from the past 10 to 15 years, along with CCTV footage from election offices. Gandhi had said Congress took 6 months to identify such discrepancies as ECI refused to share a machine readable format for the voter roll. His presentation prompted an immediate reaction from ECI, which asked him to send a signed declaration and oath to the effect. ECI officials have since publicly urged Gandhi to either sign the oath or 'apologise' to the nation.
India Gazette
08-07-2025
- Politics
- India Gazette
Bihar SIR form collection touches nearly half-way mark in 14 days; 17 more days to go: ECI
New Delhi [India], July 8 (ANI): Going by the progress of SIR (Special Intensive Revision) till 6 PM on July 08, it is most likely that the exercise of collection of Enumeration Forms will be completed well before the last day of collection, i.e. July 25, a press release from the Election Commission of India said. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar is progressing well, with 3,70,77,077 Enumeration Forms, which is 46.95 per cent of the total of 7,89,69,844 (nearly 7.90 crore) electors in Bihar, collected (at 6:00 PM) in the first 14 days since the issuance of SIR instructions on June 24. In the first two weeks of the exercise, 7.90 crore forms were printed, and over 97 per cent of forms (7,70,44,990) were distributed to electors. Also, 18.16 per cent of the forms have been uploaded to the ECINET. A large number of prospective electors prefer to submit the Enumeration Forms along with the eligibility documents as specified in SIR order dated 24.06.25 Now, the effort is to collect the remaining half of the enumeration forms and eligibility documents with still 17 more days before July 25. In the last 24 hours, i.e. from 6.00 PM yesterday, 82,78,617 Enumeration Forms have been collected, which amounts to 10.5 per cent collected in a single day. Maintaining the same momentum on the field and with just about 50 per cent of forms remaining to be collected, the exercise could be completed well within time. With the addition of 20,603 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) on the ground, the collection effort has been further expedited. Already, 77,895 BLOs have been going house-to-house to help the electors fill out their Enumeration Forms and collect them. BLOs have already completed the first of their mandated three visits to each household and the second visit is underway. Nearly 4 lakh volunteers, including government officials, NCC cadets, NSS members, etc., are also working in the field to facilitate the elderly, PwD, sick and vulnerable populations in the SIR process. Besides, EROs covering all 243 ACs, 963 AEROs, 38 DEOs, and the CEO of the state are at the ground level to facilitate the electors to submit their forms. District Presidents of all recognised political parties have also stepped up the appointment of Booth Level Agents (BLAs) and they are actively participating on the ground. As of date, 1,56,626 BLAs have been appointed, up from 1,38,680 at the beginning of the exercise. They can, even now, appoint more BLAs as per 25.2.1 of the Manual on Electoral Rolls. (ANI)
Hindustan Times
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Bihar ‘Special Intensive Revision' form collection touches nearly half-way mark in 14 days: ECI
Going by the progress of SIR (Special Intensive Revision) till 6 PM on July 08, it is most likely that the exercise of collection of Enumeration Forms will be completed well before the last day of collection, i.e. July 25, a press release from the Election Commission of India said. In the first two weeks of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, 7.90 crore forms were printed, and over 97 per cent of forms (7,70,44,990) were distributed to electors.(File Photo) The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar is progressing well, with 3,70,77,077 Enumeration Forms, which is 46.95 per cent of the total of 7,89,69,844 (nearly 7.90 crore) electors in Bihar, collected (at 6:00 PM) in the first 14 days since the issuance of SIR instructions on June 24. In the first two weeks of the exercise, 7.90 crore forms were printed, and over 97 per cent of forms (7,70,44,990) were distributed to electors. Also, 18.16 per cent of the forms have been uploaded to the ECINET. A large number of prospective electors prefer to submit the Enumeration Forms along with the eligibility documents as specified in SIR order dated 24.06.25 Now, the effort is to collect the remaining half of the enumeration forms and eligibility documents with still 17 more days before July 25. In the last 24 hours, i.e. from 6.00 PM yesterday, 82,78,617 Enumeration Forms have been collected, which amounts to 10.5 per cent collected in a single day. Maintaining the same momentum on the field and with just about 50 per cent of forms remaining to be collected, the exercise could be completed well within time. With the addition of 20,603 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) on the ground, the collection effort has been further expedited. Already, 77,895 BLOs have been going house-to-house to help the electors fill out their Enumeration Forms and collect them. BLOs have already completed the first of their mandated three visits to each household and the second visit is underway. Nearly 4 lakh volunteers, including government officials, NCC cadets, NSS members, etc., are also working in the field to facilitate the elderly, PwD, sick and vulnerable populations in the SIR process. Besides, EROs covering all 243 ACs, 963 AEROs, 38 DEOs, and the CEO of the state are at the ground level to facilitate the electors to submit their forms. District Presidents of all recognised political parties have also stepped up the appointment of Booth Level Agents (BLAs) and they are actively participating on the ground. As of date, 1,56,626 BLAs have been appointed, up from 1,38,680 at the beginning of the exercise. They can, even now, appoint more BLAs as per 25.2.1 of the Manual on Electoral Rolls.
NDTV
08-07-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
Poll Body Says May Complete Bihar Roll Revision Exercise Before Deadline
New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has expressed confidence that the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar will be completed well ahead of the July 25 deadline, based on the progress recorded up to 6 P.M. on Tuesday. According to the ECI, as of now, 3,70,77,077 Enumeration Forms amounting to 46.95 per cent of the total 7,89,69,844 (approximately 7.90 crore) electors in Bihar, have been collected since the launch of the exercise on June 24. In the first two weeks, all 7.90 crore Enumeration Forms were printed, and over 97 per cent (7,70,44,990) have already been distributed to eligible electors. Furthermore, 18.16 per cent of the collected forms have been uploaded to the ECINET platform. A significant number of prospective electors are choosing to submit their Enumeration Forms along with the required eligibility documents, as per the SIR order dated June 24. With 17 days still remaining, the focus now shifts to collecting the remaining 50 per cent of the forms. In just the last 24 hours (till 6 P.M. on Tuesday, July 8) as many as 82,78,617 forms were collected -- representing 10.5 per cent of the total in a single day. "If this pace continues, the collection phase could conclude well before the July 25 deadline," the ECI statement said. To accelerate the process, an additional 20,603 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) have been deployed, taking the total number on the ground to 77,895. These BLOs have already completed the first of their mandated three household visits, with the second round currently underway. In addition, nearly 4 lakh volunteers, including government officials, NCC cadets, NSS members, and others, are assisting the elderly, differently-abled, and vulnerable populations in filling and submitting the forms. The administrative machinery is also fully mobilised, with Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) covering all 243 Assembly Constituencies and 963 Assistant EROs, 38 District Election Officers, and the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar overseeing the process at the ground level. Recognised political parties, too, are playing an active role, the ECI statement said. District presidents of political parties have ramped up the appointment of Booth Level Agents (BLAs), with the current number standing at 1,56,626 -- up from 1,38,680 at the beginning of the exercise. Political parties still have the option to appoint more BLAs under provision 25.2.1 of the Manual on Electoral Rolls.
