Ranchi: State chief electoral officer (CEO) K Ravi Kumar on Wednesday said “the entire process of SIR so far has been transparent and inclusive”, pointing to sustained consultations with political parties, extensive public outreach and field-level verification during the enumeration period.Recognised political parties were consulted through regular meetings at every administrative level. “Five meetings were held at the CEO level, more than 75 at the DEO (district election officer) level, more than 165 at the ERO (electoral registration officer) level, and more than 600 at the assistant ERO and additional AERO levels, taking the total to over 845 meetings across the state,” Kumar said.He said the exercise sought to ensure that no eligible elector was excluded. The CEO, DEOs and EROs conducted awareness drives and regularly shared progress with political parties. From June 30, BLOs visited homes of electors, distributed enumeration forms and organised camps in urban areas for migrated voters, assisted by BLAs and volunteers.Following concerns about unmapped voters, a list of 70,62,319 electors was displayed at all polling stations on May 23. A statewide mapping drive reduced the number to 47,42,505 before enumeration started. Soft copies were also provided to recognised parties to facilitate participation of booth level agents (BLA-2). Further mapping brought the number down to 14,02,262, or 5.3% of the electorate, at the time of draft publication. Their inclusion will be considered after notices and verification at the ERO level.The CEO’s office issued 45 FAQs along with posters, advertisements, countdown creatives, leaflets, hoardings, training videos, video shorts and promotional films. According to an official statement, it also held a media orientation on May 21, and the state-level content creators’ meet 2026 on June 26. It issued 62 press releases, conducted the #JharkhandSIR campaign and published 29 daily bulletins from July 1 to 29.BLOs completed 100% distribution and digitisation of enumeration forms. Their work was supported by over 900 digitisation camps, high-speed Wi-Fi, repeated training and doubt-clearing sessions, video tutorials and a dedicated monitoring team. Officials who completed the work early were felicitated.Congress said in a statement, “We demand EC to provide more time to voters to raise their objections and claims. Omission of around 14 lakh voters from the draft is quite worrying.”
