Daijiworld Media Network - Panaji

Panaji, Nov 7: The Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) has announced an intensified statewide campaign against alleged discrepancies and irregularities in electoral rolls under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), accusing the Election Commission of compromising the transparency of the voter-list revision process.

Announcing the campaign, AICC observer and former Maharashtra minister Yashomati Thakur said the Congress would step up its 'Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao' campaign to highlight alleged voter deletions and mobilise public support. She demanded the immediate resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that the Election Commission had failed to address serious concerns raised over the revision exercise.

Thakur claimed that even members of her own family had been affected, alleging that her children's names were deleted from the electoral rolls and that discrepancies were noticed in their dates of birth. She cautioned that similar problems could affect other eligible voters and said the party would continue raising the issue.

GPCC president Girish Chodankar also questioned the purpose and conduct of the SIR exercise. He alleged that while the 2002 revision was aimed at making electoral rolls more inclusive, the 2026 exercise appeared to be resulting in the exclusion of eligible voters. He further claimed that the present revision was effectively being driven by the BJP rather than being conducted independently by the Election Commission.

The Congress has planned house-to-house outreach, district-level press conferences and booth-level awareness programmes to identify alleged voter deletions and inform people about their electoral rights. Party workers will reach out to households and encourage voters to check their names and raise objections wherever necessary.

The campaign comes amid a series of controversies surrounding Goa's SIR exercise. One major issue involved 97 voters who were initially flagged for 'logical discrepancies' in the electoral rolls. After examining documents and objections submitted by 649 electors, Electoral Registration Officers and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers found these 97 voters eligible for inclusion.

However, the final electoral roll published on February 21 did not include their names. According to an investigation by reporters, the Goa Chief Electoral Officer's office sent eight communications to the Election Commission between February 11 and 17, seeking a facility to reverse the deletion decisions. The required rollback facility was not made available in time.

The Election Commission subsequently said that Booth Level Officers had conducted house-to-house visits to process the cases through Form 6 and that many of the affected voters had since been enrolled, while the remaining cases were being processed. Goa Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel had also maintained that eligible voters whose names were missing could seek inclusion by submitting Form 6.

The controversy has also reached the courts. On November 5, the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court directed the Election Commission to include the names of petitioners whose names had been deleted from the electoral rolls, after verifying their residence, within 10 days. The court refused the Election Commission's request for a stay on its order.

The Congress has maintained that the issue concerns the constitutional right to vote and the credibility of the electoral process, and has called for accountability and corrective action to ensure that no eligible voter is left out.