Mumbai: A Congress delegation led by party state chief Harshvardhan Sapkal met state chief electoral officer S Chockalingam and demanded impartial implementation of the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The delegation said it was concerned since in several other states complaints had emerged alleging that votes of specific castes and communities were being deliberately excluded.The delegation stated that in some states serious irregularities were reported in SIR drives conducted just ahead of elections, and that it appeared the campaign was being implemented in a way that benefited the ruling party. Sapkal stated that the SIR process in Maharashtra was previously conducted between 2002–04 over a period of nearly 13 months without any haste. Now, after 25 years, with an increase of approximately 3.5 crore voters, he said the process should be planned accordingly. Since there were no elections in Maharashtra in the next 2–3 years, he said there was no objection if the process took one-and-a-half to two years, and that providing adequate time would ensure there was no suspicion among the public. Sapkal also emphasised that the census and SIR should not be conducted by the same officials or staff. He said political party representatives should be provided with SIR data in soft copy, OCR, and machine-readable formats, as well as hard copies. He said a minimum period of one month should be given to raise objections or respond to notices related to the SIR.
