Kerala Election Commission to meet political parties on SIR of voter lists

Lauding 100 per cent digital literacy in the state, CEO Kelkar said that the exercise will be "easy" and will be conducted with the support of the stakeholders, including public, media, and parties

As the Election Commission of India prepares for a Bihar-like Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list across the country, Kerala Chief Election Officer (CEO) Rathan U Kelkar said that a meeting is scheduled with the state political parties on September 20.

The Kerala CEO told ANI on Friday that they will hold a meeting with political parties to brief them regarding the SIR exercise.

"So we have taken all the steps to ensure that we are ready, and we are looking forward to the schedule. And as part of this, we are also having a meeting with the political parties on the 20th of this month, where we will explain the steps and processes involved," he said.

He added that the SIR exercise in the state will be announced soon, and the State Election Commission has digitised the records and uploaded them in a searchable format on their website.

He said, "In the last meeting of the Election Commission of India, we had a meeting on the preparedness of SIR across the country in all the states. From Kerala, we had presented our preparedness, and we expect that the SIR will be announced any time soon. And as part of this SIR, we had already undertaken some preparedness activities in Kerala. We had our SIR, which was done in the year 2002."

"So we have digitised all the records. We have put it in a searchable format on our website. We have trained our election machinery. We have ensured that all the requirements for undertaking an SIR in Kerala are already prepared," he added.

Lauding 100 per cent digital literacy in the state, CEO Kelkar said that the exercise will be "easy" and will be conducted with the support of the stakeholders, including the public, the media and the political parties.

He said, "As part of document provisioning, Kerala is already digitising 100 per cent of its documents. 100 per cent of digital literacy is also there in Kerala. Fortunately, we have 100 per cent 4G coverage. We have a very informed society, we have good support from the people, the media, and the political parties. We feel it will be a very good coordinated effort from all the stakeholders to ensure that this entire exercise is done in a very easy and a very useful way."

Earlier on Wednesday, the ECI held a conference of Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) in the nationla capital of all States and Union Territories, and assessed the preparedness for the nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls.

This was the third Conference of Chief Electoral Officers this year. A presentation on the strategies, constraints and best practices adopted was made by the CEO of Bihar so that the CEOs of the rest of the country learn from their experiences, said EC in a press note.