The Chief Election Commission er’s description of Goa’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as the ‘best’ in the country has come under sharp po litical challenge, with the exercise leaving the State with 1,27,468 fewer elec tors than it had before the revision. The scale of the reduc tion assumes significance with Goa heading towards the 2027 Assembly elec tions. The electorate stood at 11,85,034 before the SIR but fell to 10,57,566 in the roll published after the ex ercise — a net reduction of 10.76 per cent.
Although the rolls have since expanded, they remain substantially below their pre-SIR strength. Accord ing to data available with the State Election Office, Goa’s electorate stood at 10,76,688 as of September 3, after 28,361 voters were added and 9,239 names de leted following publication of the final SIR roll. The post-SIR deletions comprised 1,420 electors removed following their deaths, 6,802 found to have permanently shifted, 118 duplicate entries and 899 persons disqualified for not being Indian citizens. The figures have never theless raised questions over the much larger reduc tion during the SIR, particu larly after Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, during his two-day visit to Goa, praised the State’s electoral machinery and declared that “Goa has the best SIR in the country”. The Election Commission maintains that electoral rolls undergo multiple lev els of verification and audit, with Booth Level Officers (BLOs) preparing the rolls and Booth Level Agents (BLAs) appointed by polit ical parties auditing them concurrently.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
Kumar also stressed the transparency of the electoral process during his Goa visit. The Congress, however, has questioned whether these safeguards adequately explain the scale and pattern of the deletions. According to the party, 1,00,042 names were excluded at the draft-roll stage and another 39,592 were deleted during the claims and objections process, while only 12,166 new voters were added during the SIR. The Congress has described the exercise as the ‘most manipu lated revision’ of Goa’s electoral rolls. Congress spokesperson Savio Coutinho, who has been examining the rolls and complaints on the ground, said the party had compiled a dossier containing electoral-roll se rial numbers, EPIC numbers, BLA documents, complaints and correspondence and submitted it to Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Coutinho alleged that the party’s examination of ques tionable deletions showed a disproportionate impact on minority voters. “Over 90% of the questionable deletions we examined involve minority voters,” Coutinho charged. He also flagged Navelim for scrutiny, alleging that nine BJP BLAs submitted 384 deletion applications on January 15 alone. Coutinho said Election Commission rules permit a BLA to submit a maximum of 10 forms a day, with safe guards coming into effect after 30 submissions, and ques tioned how the applications were processed and whether the prescribed safeguards were followed. The Congress has demanded booth-wise and constitu ency-wise disclosure of the reasons for deletions, along with party-wise and BLA-wise Form 7 data. It has also sought an investigation into the Navelim applications and an empirical examination of its allegation that minority voters were disproportionately affected.
Coutinho also highlighted the potential electoral conse quences of a revision of this magnitude. “If we assume half of the 1,39,634 names deleted during the exercise as genuine voters, 69,817 electors would be affected. That works out to roughly 1,750 voters in each of Goa’s 40 Assembly constituencies. This figure is signifi cant given the narrow margins in recent elections. Eleven constituencies in the 2017 Assembly election and 17 in 2022 were won by margins of 1,750 votes or less. Across the two elections, 22 constituencies recorded a victory margin within that figure at least once,” Coutinho said. The comparison does not establish that the deleted vot ers were wrongly removed or that the SIR was politically manipulated. It does, however, illustrate why the accuracy of the deletions matters in a State where several Assembly contests are decided by relatively narrow margins. The issue was brought into sharper focus during Ku mar’s interaction with the media, when journalists ques tioned him about the large number of deletions from Goa’s rolls. His reported response was: “Ask the students.” Coutinho hit back: “Was the SIR conducted by the stu dents or by the Election Commission?” The Congress has also alleged political interference in parts of Panjim days before the CEC’s Goa visit. “BLOs in Parts 10, 16 and 18 were under political pressure.
Local MLA and Revenue Minister Babush Monserrate and BJP leaders were influencing the BLOs,” GPCC Working Pres ident Sunil Kawthankar had alleged. “How could allegedly ineligible or bogus voters have remained on the rolls despite the SIR? We will approach the Chief Electoral Officer with our complaints and seek action, including over alleged fake affidavits, if necessary,” Congress spokesperson Amit Palekar said. Concerns have also been raised by political workers over individual deletions. Santa Cruz Booth Level Agent Edwin Vaz said more than 100 names from Part 23 were deleted during the SIR and that most of the affected voters had filed appeals. “Names of more than 100 voters from Part 23 of the Santa Cruz constituency were deleted during the SIR pro cess. Most of them have filed appeals, and perhaps one or two names may have been restored. However, those who have been enrolled are mainly new voters who have shift ed their residences, including first-time voters.
After the SIR exercise, we had no contact with the BLOs or the Elec tion Office,” Vaz said. Former Santa Cruz Block Congress president John Naz areth said several voters whose names were deleted after publication of the final SIR roll had appealed for their res toration. He said many of the affected voters were from Chimbel and that those unable to produce the required documents had their names permanently deleted. “Only a few voters whose names matched those in the 2002 electoral rolls were added back,” Nazareth said, add ing that many voters remained awaiting decisions on their appeals. Political parties and electors aggrieved by decisions of Electoral Registration Officers have also filed appeals be fore the respective District Election Officers under Section 24(a) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. “If Goa conducted India’s ‘best SIR’, the Election Com mission should have no difficulty in accepting these de mands of ours,” Coutinho concluded.
