Anxiety grips Telangana NRIs in Dubai over electoral rolls verification

Thousands of Telangana migrant workers in Dubai's Sonapur are worried about the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, fearing document-related complications and expensive trips home to retain their names on the voter list amid uncertainty over verification requirements.

Dubai: A sense of anxiety grips Sonapur in Dubai amid mounting legal challenges and growing apprehension about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls verification that has begun back home in Telangana.

The neighbourhood of Sonapur houses thousands of Telangana migrant workers who have lived hand-to-mouth for years, mostly doing marginal jobs. Some of their passports or visas have expired, making them illegal residents in a foreign country. Yet, all of them are Indian citizens and possess voter identity cards as well as Aadhaar.

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A significant number of NRI workers are also worried about discrepancies in their official documents, a common yet complex issue that prevails in rural areas and continues to haunt them. They now fear that they may have to make sudden and expensive trips back home to retain their names on India’s electoral rolls.

For most NRI workers, an unplanned trip home means extra costs and lost wages against the backdrop of a volatile employment market and surging airfares amid geopolitical developments in the region. Chintala Srinivas, who works in Dubai, is a registered voter in his village in Jagtial district and has all the required documents. “There has been no problem so far, but I don’t know what will happen now,” he said.

Srinivas is just one among thousands of anxious workers abroad who are looking for the next course of action, with no one to help them. The prescribed documents are not sought from every elector at the time of submitting the enumeration form, and this is compounding anxiety and tension, said Mohammed Abdul Jabbar, a Telangana activist in Saudi Arabia.

They come into play only if an Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) issues a notice, for instance, when records cannot be linked with earlier electoral rolls, discrepancies emerge, or the officer has doubts about a person’s eligibility.

“Since no voter knows in advance who may receive such a notice or what level of documentary scrutiny they may ultimately face, it is posing a million-dollar question,” added Jabbar. Most NRIs ask a question that has no answer: If a passport is not enough, what exactly is expected to satisfy the verification?