Maharashtra electoral roll notices for voters who have not yet submitted supporting documents are now being published online, giving affected electors until the end of October to resolve discrepancies before the final voter list is issued on November 16.
The pending notices are available through the website of the chief electoral officer, Maharashtra. As of Saturday, lists for nine Assembly constituencies across four districts had been uploaded. These include three constituencies in Chandrapur, Byculla in Mumbai City, four constituencies in Parbhani and Koregaon in Satara.
Electors can check the pending notices section on the website and contact booth-level officers, or BLOs, for assistance. Officials said the lists contain only cases that remain unresolved and do not represent all 1.22 crore notices generated during the special intensive revision, or SIR, exercise.
Cases where electoral registration officers were satisfied with the documents submitted and completed the verification process will not appear in the pending lists. Officials said this was intended to prevent unnecessary anxiety among voters whose cases had already been cleared.
The draft electoral roll was published on August 31. Under the revised schedule, the notice stage and the disposal of claims and objections will conclude on November 10, followed by publication of the final electoral roll on November 16.
The resolution process is being conducted largely through document verification, without routine formal hearings. Some electors have approached BLOs with the required documents, while in other cases BLOs have visited voters’ homes to collect papers. Several electors had submitted supporting documents during the house-to-house enumeration drive, but those documents could not be uploaded at the time because the system did not have a provision for it. Electoral registration officers are now collating those documents and updating the records.
Maharashtra chief electoral officer S Chockalingam told The Times of India that notices issued over logical discrepancies and unmapped electors were being cleared after BLOs collected the required documents. “All efforts are being made to ensure that the documents are collected within the time. EROs are verifying the documents and clearing cases where no hearing is required,” he said.
An Election Commission of India directive issued on September 26 stated that electors served notices over unmapped records or logical discrepancies need not routinely appear before electoral registration officers or assistant electoral registration officers. BLOs will collect supporting documents from electors and upload them on the ECINET platform for the electoral registration officer’s decision. Hearings may be held in exceptional cases, preferably online, and an authorised adult family member may attend on behalf of an elector when required.
A BLO quoted by The Times of India said cases involving logical discrepancies were being cleared immediately, while documents for unmapped cases were being collected and checked. Another BLO said the main difficulty was reaching electors who were not responding to calls seeking supporting documents. In one case, the officer said the number of pending cases had fallen from more than 100 to 30.
Electors whose notices remain unresolved must submit the required documents by the end of October. The claims and objections process will close on November 10, ahead of the final electoral roll’s scheduled publication on November 16.
