Panaji, Sept 27: The controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has intensified, with SIR Citizens’ Monitor–Goa sharply criticising the Election Commission of India’s latest response and alleging that it fails to address fundamental questions over voter deletions and remedies available to affected electors.

In a press release issued on Sunday, the citizens’ group described the ECI press note as a “complete eye-wash” and said it did not adequately respond to issues highlighted in recent media reports or concerns raised by civil-society and human-rights groups. These are allegations by the group; the ECI has defended the SIR process and announced changes to address some concerns.

The intervention comes after the ECI decided that voters issued notices for being “unmapped” or for logical discrepancies need not ordinarily appear personally before election officials. Instead, Booth Level Officers will visit them to collect documents, with hearings required only in exceptional circumstances. The Commission has also announced a review of ECINet.

‘But what happens to Goa’s deleted voters?’

The Goa group argues that this remedy leaves a crucial question unanswered: what happens in states such as Goa where the final SIR rolls have already been published?

It contends that asking affected electors to use the regular registration forms does not adequately address cases where people who were already voters allegedly lost their names during the SIR exercise.

The group also raised cases where, it says, eligible voters were deleted because Enumeration Forms were either not distributed or received, and cases where hearing notices were claimed to have been served but allegedly were not actually delivered.

Another major objection concerns the use of Form 6. The group argues that requiring previously registered voters to file Form 6 afresh can create difficulties because the form is intended for new-voter registration. It therefore questions whether this can constitute an effective remedy for voters whose earlier registration was affected during SIR.

The ECI, for its part, has backed the Form 6 route for excluded voters, and reports on its latest press note say it maintained that the SIR decisions had unanimous approval of the Commission.

No rollback mechanism, group alleges

SIR Citizens’ Monitor–Goa further claims that the ECI has not provided an adequate “rollback” mechanism to restore the original electoral status and EPIC numbers of voters who were subsequently enumerated afresh.

It also criticised what it described as inadequate extensions of deadlines during the Goa exercise, saying extensions at different stages amounted only to a few days or a week.

The group dismissed the ECI’s announcement of a committee/review mechanism as insufficient, alleging that it was aimed at managing the controversy rather than resolving the underlying problems. The ECI has said its measures are intended to improve procedures and provide greater flexibility to field officials.

Supreme Court ruling does not end procedural questions

The group also referred to the Supreme Court’s SIR judgment. The Court upheld the ECI’s legal power to conduct SIR and found the Bihar exercise constitutionally valid, while also setting out safeguards concerning inclusion, deletion and citizenship-related inquiries. The judgment recognised judicial review as a remedy in cases of wrongful deletion on specified grounds.

Against this backdrop, SIR Citizens’ Monitor–Goa has demanded that the SIR process in Goa either be reopened for a substantially longer period with safeguards to ensure eligible voters are not excluded, or be scrapped.

The group went further, demanding that no announcement of the forthcoming Goa Assembly election be made until the issue is resolved, alleging that several thousand Goan voters have been disenfranchised through the process. That figure and allegation are the group’s claims and are not independently established by the material available here.

The statement has been endorsed by Albertina Almeida, Elvis Gomes, Radhika Desai, Melwin Fernandez, Abdul Wahab, Cyril Fernandes and Caroline Collasso.