Team Goemkarponn
PANAJI: Nearly 35,000 electors who lost their names from Goa’s electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) have already been added back through fresh enrolment, while thousands of others will now have a simpler route to seek inclusion.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has removed the additional declaration that was linked to the online Form 6 application in states and Union Territories where the SIR process has been completed, including Goa.
The relaxation means eligible electors who were classified as “unmapped” or under “Logical Discrepancies” can now apply for inclusion using the regular Form 6 without submitting the additional declaration concerning their own or their parents’ electoral details from an earlier SIR.
Goa Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel said around 35,000 voters had already returned to the electoral roll after filing Form 6 applications.
Goel also clarified that deletion from the electoral roll does not prevent a person from applying again for inclusion.
“Nobody whose names were deleted is barred from reapplying for inclusion of their names. Electoral roll is a continuous updation and everybody has a right to get their names included,” Goel said.
Goa’s SIR exercise began with around 11.85 lakh electors. After the revision, the number of eligible voters stood at approximately 10.57 lakh.
During the exercise, election authorities placed 1,00,042 electors in the ASDD category — Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate — after enumeration forms were not received. The category included 25,574 voters identified as deceased and 40,469 who were found to have permanently shifted to other states.
A further 12,166 voters were included as fresh electors during the revision process.
The SIR also resulted in a net deletion of 27,426 voters. Among 9,02,589 mapped electors, 58,923 were flagged under the Logical Discrepancies category following issues detected in the ECI’s IT system, including mismatches involving names and age details of family members.
After notices were issued and hearings and document verification were conducted, 35,780 electors were classified as ineligible under the unmapped and Logical Discrepancies categories.
On voters identified as permanently shifted, Goel said they would ordinarily be expected to enrol themselves in the states where they had moved to avoid duplicate entries.
With the additional SIR declaration now withdrawn, eligible applicants in Goa can use the standard Form 6 procedure to seek inclusion in the electoral roll.
