No more in-person SIR hearings in Telangana

Electors receiving notices under Telangana’s Special Intensive Revision will no longer have to attend in-person hearings, Chief Electoral Officer C Sudharsan Reddy said. BLOs will collect documents from electors and upload them online, while exceptional cases may be heard online.

Hyderabad: Electors who receive notices as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls will not have to attend in-person hearings in Telangana. Instead, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will visit the respective electors to collect documents and upload them on the ECI Net for a decision by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) or Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO).

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Telangana Chief Electoral Officer C Sudharsan Reddy said calling people for hearings at a particular place would be “avoided”.

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The ECI has released new guidelines asking BLOs to go into the field and collect documents from the respective electors. While collecting the documents, the BLO will take a photograph and upload them on the ECI Net, he said.

The CEO made it clear that only in exceptional circumstances, as decided by the ERO or AERO, hearings would be held, preferably online. “This will be done through the available and convenient communication modes. Software to that effect has been updated and enabled,” he said.

The EROs, according to the CEO, would act in cases where hearings need to be conducted for people who are dead or have shifted their address after the draft rolls were published.

“In these cases, the ERO will issue a speaking order that will be done in online mode but not in-person. Further, speaking orders are issued only in the cases of the electors, who are found ineligible by the ERO/AERO,” he said. The CEO clarified that EROs would inquire locally and decide in cases involving genuine and innocent electors who do not have the required documents.

Sudharsan Reddy asked electors to register their complaints with the toll-free number 1950 or with the respective ERO or AERO if a BLO fails to reach them for document collection.

Responding to a query on the large-scale deletion of electors’ names in Khairatabad Assembly constituency, Sudharsan Reddy said around 80,000 voters who had shifted or migrated had been removed, and 40,000 out of 81,000 electors with anomalies had already been marked for inclusion in the final electoral roll. “ECI will take a final call on when to hold the by-election to Khairatabad Assembly constituency,” he said.