ECI Orders Statewide Review After Errors Found In UP Post-SIR Electoral Rolls
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered an immediate statewide examination of Uttar Pradesh’s voter lists after major irregularities and duplicate entries came to light, trailing the conclusion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa admitted that errors and duplicate entries managed to persist in the updated lists, a confession that follows intense, multi-party scrutiny from opposition groups over the integrity of the state’s electoral data.
The investigation has already triggered severe disciplinary actions. In Pilibhit, where Congress leaders flagged over 13,150 altered voter names that bizarrely retained identical EPIC and serial numbers, the state took swift action.
Two Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) alongside essential computer operations staff were abruptly removed from their posts as the probe widened.
Is CEC Gyanesh Kumar A Citizen Of India?, Asks TMC MP Saket Gokhale Over SIR Data
Beyond Pilibhit, political parties have raised alarms over auto-generated deletion forms pushing voters off the rolls without explicit authorization or valid justification.
While the CEO’s office disputed systemic unauthorized deletions, it has placed strict restrictions on individuals filing mass deletion forms to prevent potential voter suppression.
Furthermore, anomalies involving mismatched genders and wrong parental listings were confirmed, though officials maintain these clerical slip-ups represent less than 0.01% of entries in the most heavily affected constituencies.
District Election Officers (DEOs) across all districts in Uttar Pradesh have now been mandated to run field verifications.
The election body is racing against a tight deadline to purge duplicate listings and verify authenticity before the final publication of the upcoming electoral roll.
