Uttarakhand ELECTION COMMISSION actively involved in preliminary preparation before the SIR is announced in Uttarakhand

The Election Commission has started Special Intensive Revision in various states of the country and in Uttarakhand too the preliminary preparations is underway in terms of checking the voters list before the SIR is declared by the ECI.

Currently, a separate database is being prepared of those who came from other states after the year 2003 and settled here and became voters.

This will be used once the SIR is implemented in the state and the Centre allows the state to match it with the voter lists of other states.

The State Election Officer’s office is currently engaged in voter list reconciliation.

A BLO app has also been created for this purpose. The 2025 voter list is being examined to determine how many voters’ names are included in the 2003 list.

These include the names of voters who have moved within the state. It’s also being seen that the names of parents of new voters who became voters after 2003 are also being seen on the voter list.

It is being verified where they were voters at the time.

All this data is being incorporated into the BLO app. The purpose of this entire exercise is to create a robust database of voters living in the state before the SIR.
Voters whose names are included in this database will not have to submit many documents during SIR and their names will be included in the voter list.

Additionally, a separate database is being created for voters coming from outside the state. It is being monitored which state they came from to become voters here.

In Bihar assembly elections the issue of SIR led to tremendous controversy and the matter went up to Supreme Court with the latter directing the election commission to accept the Adhar Card etc as the authentic document to prove the voters credential in the process of Special Intensive Revision.

In Uttarakhand the issue of the names of the voters in two voters list raised lot of controversy during the Panchayati elections when several candidates had names twice in the voters k st and the state election commission vindicating it.

The matter was so hyped by the media that it finally went to the Supreme Court few months ago with the apex court coming down heavily on the Uttarakhand election commision and strongly reprimanded it.

This Supreme Court reprimand had then degraded the reputation of the Uttarakhand Election Commision everywhere.

After the reprimand the credibility of UCC had come under question then.

The matter was related to the Panchayat elections when during the conduction of elections a question was raised about dual membership of several Candidates especially those from the ruling political dispensation.

Then the Uttarakhand Election Commission had given its green signal to dual voting rights in different places and different elections.

The election commission had then issued a circular saying that those persons or candidates having their names in two different voter lists shouldn’t be cancelled and should be allowed to vote or contest.

There was lot of hue and cry on this issue then. Then the matter had gone to the Uttarakhand High Court and the judge concerned had clearly said that this is absolutely wrong and unconstitutional,hence those who have such names in two different voters list should not be allowed to contest or vote.

The High Court had then catagorically ruled that this is unambiguously against the norms of the Punchayati Act.

But the Uttarakhand Election Commission was adamant and didn’t budge. Instead it went to the supreme Court with the optimism that it will turn down the Uttarakhand High Court order.

But instead the Learned supreme Court judges vindicated the Uttarakhand High Court judgement and had imposed a penalty of Rs two lakhs on Uttarakhand Election Commission reprimanding it strongly thus degrading its image at the pan India level directing it to immediately scan the entire voters list and those having names at two places in two different voters lists their names should be deleted forthwith.

This will now definitely adversely impact those who have won elections in Punchayati election recently.