Shillong, May 12: The special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls will be free from bias and will not target any particular community, Meghalaya’s Chief Election Officer, BDR Tiwari assured today.
SIR has been a contentious issue in the country, with millions of voters’ names struck off the rolls in several states, including West Bengal and Assam, which went to the polls recently. Muslims, particularly, have claimed that the SIR has been unfair to them, with allegations that the community was specifically targetted to disenfranchise them, especially as few of them vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the central government. The Election Commission of India, however, has denied these claims.
The SIR in Meghalaya has yet to take place but Tiwari promised that it would be conducted fairly. The state has a relatively small Muslim population but pockets, such as the plains region of Garo Hills, have significant communities. It is a common refrain in Garo Hills politics that many in the Muslim community there are illegal migrants.
Tiwari said today that the SIR in other states was conducted transparently.
He also made mention of the important dates in the SIR process. July 1, 1987 is one of them – as per the Indian Citizenship Act whoever was born before that date in India is an Indian citizen by birth. The other date is December 2004, when the previous SIR was conducted in Meghalaya. Verification will be based on whether the voters, or their parents and/or grandparents were in the SIR in 2004.
