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The Election Commission of India (ECI), in a series of reconsideration of its earlier decisions, took another major decision on Wednesday and issued an order regarding distribution of work.
In the new order, the monitoring system of the Director General (IT) has been restored. According to the Indian Express report, this system of monitoring was removed by an order dated July 28.
In the latest order of the Commission, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma was given the charge of 'IT/ICT' and regarding the Director General (IT) it was said that she 'will forward the files through the Senior Deputy Election Commissioner.'
In recent times, the Election Commission has withdrawn many of its earlier decisions.
On the latest decision, TMC (Mamata Banerjee) Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghosh wrote on Twitter on Friday, "ECI is having to withdraw its decisions every day and give clarifications, considering that even the Supreme Court cannot avoid questions."
"Why did the Supreme Court not stay the Election Commission before the West Bengal elections? Why did the learned judge say that "those who cannot vote this time can vote next time"? Why did the Supreme Court, despite being a constitutional court, take the constitutional right to vote so lightly?"
In fact, on September 23, a report was published in 'The Indian Express' in which it was claimed that on at least 14 occasions between October last year and August this year, two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had lodged on record objections to several decisions of the Election Commission related to ECINET and SIR.
After this, Cockroach Janata Party and opposition parties opened a front against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and started demanding his resignation.
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After the arrival of this report, a meeting of the Election Commission was held. The statement that followed said that all decisions were taken unanimously. The Commission also took some corrective steps.
But the Cockroach Janata Party and the opposition parties demonstrated several times in Delhi and other parts of the country, with the opposition parties marching to the Supreme Court on October 12 and the 'Maharally' at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan on November 1 being the major stops.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission tried to clarify its position by issuing orders one after the other and took many decisions which the opposition is calling a U-turn.
Let's take a look at these decisions.
SSR announced in six states
Last Thursday, the Election Commission announced the conduct of Special Summary Revision (SSR) under a special campaign in six states and union territories.
According to news agency PTI, the order said that there will be SSR in Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Mizoram, Odisha and Sikkim.
Apart from this, the states and union territories where the SIR process is ongoing or has been completed include Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Delhi, Tripura and Telangana. The SSR schedule in these states and union territories will be announced later.
SIR has not yet started in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh. The schedule will be announced at the right time keeping in mind the weather conditions in these three states and union territories.
Dispute regarding distribution of work in IT department
Image source, ANI
Earlier on Wednesday, the Commission had issued orders regarding distribution of work of the officers looking after ICINET.
In fact, the opposition had raised questions regarding the centralization of ECINET when the Indian Express report had claimed that two election commissioners had raised questions regarding the work related to it.
The Indian Express reported that the two election commissioners had said in separate internal notes that officials deployed at the ground level had told them that they were not getting proper access to ERONET, which was leading to "centralization of voter lists".
The IT department of the Election Commission operates ECINET and ERONET. ECI is a digital platform that facilitates citizen participation and engagement in the election process. At the same time, with the help of ERO, the officials of the Commission manage the electoral system.
The opposition alleged that the Election Commission is arbitrarily doing the work of adding and removing names centrally through ERONET.
Changes in Form 6 withdrawn
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The biggest controversy was regarding adding an additional declaration regarding SIR in Form 6.
The Commission issued an order stating that where the process of SIR is in progress, the Commission has removed the declaration related to SIR in the online version of Form 6 on its ICINET portal.
This means that new voters will no longer have to indicate in their online registration application whether their name was in the electoral roll during the previous SIR conducted in the early 2000s. Or were any of their parents or grandparents named in that voter list? Or were his and his parents' names not in that list?
Without answering this, the applicant could not proceed further with the process of filling the form.
On the Commission's move, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, "This was one of the most serious mistakes. The general public has not fully understood all these incidents that took place under the Election Commission. These incidents took place during the tenure of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and clearly involved serious irregularities at the bureaucratic and administrative level."
"Two other Election Commissioners had also raised objections in this matter. One of these cases is of Form 6, in which a new declaration was added by making a sudden unilateral change. Whereas such declaration is not allowed in the rules and laws of the country. During the tenure of this Election Commission, Form 7 with thousands of names was allowed to be filled together. This also happened in states like West Bengal. As a result, a large number of people were denied the right to vote on the basis of mere suspicion."
Limit for filling Form 7 fixed
The opposition has consistently alleged that Form 7 was used en masse to remove names from the voter list.
Form 7 is used to make a request for deletion of a name from the electoral roll or to lodge an objection to the inclusion of a person's name in the electoral roll.
In instructions issued to the Chief Electoral Officers of all states and union territories on October 10, the Election Commission said such cases of large number of simultaneous submission of Form 7 have been brought to its notice.
Along with this, the Commission said in the new instructions that during the period of filing claims and objections during SIR, any person can submit only a maximum of 10 Forms 7, online or offline.
Whereas, under the normal process, during the continuous update of the voter list, a person will be allowed to submit only 10 Form 7 every month.
readable voter list
Last month, on October 15, the ECI issued an order saying that under the SSR process, voter lists will be made available to political parties in a searchable format.
Political parties will also be given separate lists of new names added to the voter list, names removed and corrections made. Apart from this, a weekly list of claims and objections will also be made available.
The Congress Party has been continuously demanding machine readable electoral rolls.
Rahul Gandhi raised this demand in Parliament. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge wrote a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner. Congress delegations also met the commission several times. But this demand was continuously rejected by the Commission.
When the Election Commission issued an order to provide readable format, Congress gave credit for this to Rahul Gandhi.
Congress leader Gurdeep Singh Sappal had said that after opposing the searchable voter roll for 8 years, the Election Commission has finally taken a U-turn on the SSR data.
Congress spokesperson Shama Mohammed shared a copy of the order on Twitter and wrote, "The Congress Party and the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, have been demanding machine-readable ones since last year. Despite this, many questions still remain. Names of 13 crore voters have been removed from the voter list and genuine voters in West Bengal were not allowed to exercise their franchise."
Published by Collective Newsroom for the BBC.
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