Election Commission of India wrote to chief electoral officers of 23 states and six Union Territories on February 19 to ‘complete preparatory work at the earliest’, stating that SIR could ‘start from April’. However, it is learnt that 16th census exercise, which started on April 1, has come in the way.
Also Read | India begins its first digital census in 16 years and this time there’s a big difference
All-important booth level officers (BLOs), crucial to SIR, are usually government teachers/employees and utilised extensively in the census exercise too. Census 2027’s ongoing first phase – house listing and housing census – was launched on April 1 and will continue until September 30 with the same pool of manpower.
An overlap with the first stage of SIR, enumeration of each elector spread out over a month, will become challenging for enumerators. Also, SIR takes at least three months and, in reality, it has stretched out even further in the second phase. Phase-II saw several cases of complaints from BLOs on deadline pressures and workload. That apart, this phase has thrown up fresh challenges, making scheduling even more difficult.
Phase-II got caught in litigation and political opposition, with several state governments moving court against ECI over various facets of SIR which often led to schedule changes. Then emerged an additional issue of ‘logical discrepancies’ in roll documentation in West Bengal. The issue landed in Supreme Court and is still simmering in prolonged and tense adjudications.
Unlike Bihar’s SIR, where ECI refused any deadline extension, second phase has seen several extensions and varied timelines across 12 states/UTs.
