Kerala Assembly elections: Excluded voters can apply for enrolment till nomination deadline, says CEC Gyanesh Kumar

Eligible voters, who have been excluded from the voters’ list following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Kerala, can be enrolled as voters till the last date of filing of nominations for the upcoming Assembly elections in Kerala, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar has said.

Speaking to mediapersons in Kochi on Saturday, Mr. Kumar said such persons shall submit the application in Form No 6 of the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is the application form for enrolling new voters, along with relevant documents. Any complaints regarding the wrong inclusion of voters on the list can challenged by submitting applications in the Form 7, which is the “application for objecting inclusion of name of other person/ seeking deletion of own name/seeking deletion of any other person’s name in electoral roll due to death/shifting.”

The complaints about wrong allocation of polling booths shall be filed using Form 8, which is meant for “correction to particulars entered in electoral roll,” he said.

Mr. Kumar said the list of persons excluded from the SIR following the booth-level screening was provided earlier to the booth-level agents of political parties. He reiterated that SIR was conducted transparently, by including all eligible voters and excluding ineligible voters from the list.

Action on complaints regarding hate speeches and violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) will be initiated within 100 hours of receiving the complaints posted in cVIGIL, a mobile application developed by the commission for citizens to report violations of MCC in real-time. The commission has plans to introduce webcasting in all the polling stations of Kerala.

Mobile phone deposit facility

Besides the other infrastructure facilities for helping voters cast their votes, including ramps and drinking water facilities, a mobile phone deposit facility will also be set up at polling stations, he said.

Mr. Kumar said the date of the Kerala polls will be announced by the commission “in due course.”

Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, Vivek Joshi and Rathan U. Kelkar, Chief Electoral Officer of Kerala, were also present.