Bihar SIR: Rationalisation of polling stations, change in BLOs spark confusion on ground

Amid the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has carried out rationalisation and reorganisation of polling stations in the entire State, a move which political parties claim has added to the confusion on the ground.

The number of polling stations in the State has now gone up from 77,895 to 90,712. This has been done to adhere to the SIR order of June 24, which had directed that the number of voters in each polling station be limited to 1,200 from the earlier ceiling of 1,500.

The ECI has said that Bihar is the first State to implement this new ceiling of voters for each polling station.

However, the ECI, instead of numbering the new booths separately, has given fresh numbers to all the booths. In addition, the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in charge of each polling station have been reassigned, according to the new numbering. This, coupled with the fact that the rationalisation process was implemented on July 26, after the first phase of SIR was over, has meant that the BLOs who collected the enumeration forms in the first phase would not be the ones handling the claims and objections from voters.

Political workers as well as voters on the ground said that many a time, the BLO who had collected the form was not available to answer their concerns regarding deletion of names, or documents that must be submitted in case a voter’s booth had been changed.

In a letter to District Election Officer, Begusarai, Congress district president Abhay Kumar Singh Sarjan, said: “BLOs of newly created parts/booths have complained that much confusion has been created by this modification of existing booths during the SIR process, because they have to procure the enumeration forms and documents collected by the BLOs of older parts/booths. Such confusion [among] the BLOs has made the process of verification of deleted electors even more difficult.”

Another Congress district president, Anil Singh, who heads the Chapra unit, told The Hindu: “Some of the BLOs who have moved to new booths are not even answering calls of voters from whom they had collected their forms”.

Similar concerns have been raised by parties like the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) as well.

However, sources in the Bihar State Election Office said that polling station rationalisation was carried out in a transparent and organised manner and all political parties were informed through distribution of the new list. Public meetings were also organised, they said.

The sources said that in cases where one polling station was divided into two, there was seamless data transfer between the two BLOs and since the officials are local residents, contacting them was not difficult for voters.

The list of polling stations has also been pasted on each building which houses them.

A senior ECI official in Delhi said that the rationalisation of polling stations was done to prevent long queues and overcrowding in booths during voting.

“Smaller booths also ensure a higher voting percentage, it has been observed,” he added.