Mumbai: While the physical verification of the electoral roll through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) will begin on June 30, election officials have successfully mapped 75% of current voters with records available in the 2002 electoral roll of the voter, their parents or grandparents.Of the state’s 9.8 crore voters, 7.4 crore have been mapped. Of the total, 17.4% names have anomaliesthatneed to be verified.In the pre-SIR mapping, urban areas with high migration have seen the lowest mapping. Three districts have reported below 60% mapping. These include: Mumbai Suburban (53.2%), Pune (54.6%) and Thane (57.5%). Also, Mumbai City is low with 62.5% mapping.By contrast, largely rural districts where there is low migration and polling booths tend to remain the same, report higher mapping. These include Hingoli (92.5%), Sindhudurg (92.3%), Ratnagiri (91.7%), Gadchiroli (91.4%), Amravati (90.7%) and Buldhana (90.4%).Meanwhile, election authorities have appealed to political parties to appoint Booth Level Agents (BLAs) at every polling station to help make the process of removing duplicate and deceased voters and registering new voters, more transparent.So far, 1.7 lakh BLAs have been appointed by political parties. Of these, the highest number amounting to 67,208 are from the BJP. This accounts for 38.7% of the total. The Shiv Sena has 49,336. The Congress has 19,576 while the SS UBT has 15,839.“The BLAs will be given the draft voter list to check for deletions. Soit’s important for political parties to appoint enough BLAs to monitor deletions,” said a senior election official.Physical visits by enumerators will take place between June 30 and July 29. The designated BLOs will conduct house-to-house visits and distribute pre-filled enumeration forms. The information needs to be verified by the voter and the form has to be signed. The enumerator will check if the information on the form is correct or needs to be changed. They will also check on absent, shifted, dead or duplicate voters. Voters will also have to provide a new photograph. —Priyanka Kakodkar
