Digitisation of SIR forms yet to pick up pace in district

Digitisation of enumeration forms, a key step in completing the initial works of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls, is yet to pick up pace in Ernakulam district, with booth-level officers (BLOs) struggling with the uphill task of distributing the forms and collecting them back filled up.

Only 17,630 forms were digitised by BLOs in the district as of Monday noon (November 17). The figure accounts for a meagre 0.66% of the total electors. As many as 2,325 BLOs have been assigned to carry out SIR works in the district with a total of 26,530,65 electors.

The BLOs have been tasked with completing the works, including digitisation of the forms, by December 4, though some of them said higher officials had instructed them to finish the process by November 25. Sources said the forms had been distributed to almost 94% of voters in the district by Tuesday.

Digitisation of the forms involve uploading details in a filled-up form to the Election Commission’s portal through the BLOApp. “In cases where a voter is dead or has shifted to another location, we just have to mark the form as ‘uncollectable’. For the remaining, we have to manually enter details in the form into the portal. We have been instructed to complete uploading at least 10% of the forms in a booth a day. It takes only three minutes to upload details in normal cases, but then it depends on the speed of each BLO. We find it difficult to complete the works as the app keeps going down during peak hours,” a BLO in the Kunnathunad Assembly constituency said.

BLOs across constituencies have cited difficulties in collecting the forms back in time as a large number of voters make mistakes while filling them up. “We have been getting back only a small number of forms filled up by voters. Many wait for us to get back to them so that they can fill in details without doubts. Even in filled-up forms, we come across a lot of mismatches,” a BLO said.

With practical difficulties mounting, many of the BLOs, in consultation with higher officials and elected representatives, have resorted to conducting camps in common areas so that voters can gather and complete the process.