‘Upload whatever they give’: AEROs allege pressure to clear SIR notices without hearings
Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) report intense pressure to clear pending voter registration hearings before the deadline, often without proper verification. Officials are allegedly instructing staff to bypass standard procedures and accept incomplete documentation to avoid automatic deletion of voter applications.
Why it matters
This highlights potential systemic failures and administrative pressure in the electoral roll revision process, raising concerns about democratic integrity.
“There is constant pressure every day to show that 100% of hearings have been completed even before the deadline. They (officials) say, upload Aadhaar card, PAN card, whatever a person gives, but finish the process. How unfair is this to those whose documents we previously rejected just because they initially submitted an Aadhaar card?”, an Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) asked, describing how instructions for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) had changed, with officials now putting pressure on them to complete hearings before the deadline, even “without conducting a hearing”.
With the number of pending hearings running into lakhs just days before the deadline, the AEROs said they were being pressured to clear notices even when they knew that a voter did not live at a particular address, to avoid the automatic generation of Form 7 applications seeking deletion.
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