Delhi SIR: BLOs race against time to complete digitisation work ahead of Aug 8 deadline

The BLOs in Delhi are racing against time to digitise voter enumeration forms to upload the remaining 40 % of the forms on the Election Commission's special intensive revision (SIR) app before the August 8 deadline.

The door-to-door exercise for distribution and digitisation of enumeration forms will close on August 8. So far, around 90 lakh forms (62 %) of voters out of the total of 1.45 crore in Delhi have been digitised, according to the data from the office of Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).

The Booth Level Officers (BLOs) have distributed forms to almost all the 1.45 crore voters.

According to the poll officials, names of around 20 % voters may be deleted in the draft publication of the city's electoral rolls on August 17, due to multiple reasons, especially on account of people moving to new locations from their registered addresses.

The final electoral rolls of Delhi will be published on October 19.

"The BLOs have received completed enumeration forms from over 20 % voters that they are currently digitising. The remaining 20 % forms are unlikely to be submitted due to the shifting of voters from their current address and their inability to trace records from the previous 2002 SIR exercise," they said.

A BLO in the West Vinod Nagar area said that the SIR exercise has become more demanding as most of the BLOs are school teachers. As the schools have opened now, they also have to attend classes, leaving less time for forms' digitisation.

"Earlier we were doing SIR work full-time, but now we've also been sent back to school," he said, adding that after spending six hours in school and around three hours commuting, BLOs have to visit the field, collect forms and upload them, making it a "very hectic schedule".

Some other BLOs complained that the "biggest hurdle" now is that many voters have not returned the enumeration forms after filling them up because of difficulty in finding details from the 2002 SIR. There are many who came to Delhi and became voters after 2002, and have to trace their details in the SIR of their home state, which is even more complicated, they said.

"It is impossible to attend to each voter and help them find the details of previous SIR and fill up the forms correctly," said another BLO in the Jasola area of the city.

The digitisation work was also slower, as many BLOs were associated with the exercise for the first time. It was even more complicated in the case of those who were not tech-savvy, as the entire process of digitisation is online, officials said.

The BLOs also said that many people took multiple enumeration forms on behalf of their family members and did not return them after completing them. All such forms will be finally marked as "uncollectable", further adding to the workload.

"Some people took 10-15 forms, submitted only two and are sitting with the rest. We have gone to some houses four-five times, but they seek more time," said a BLO in Subhash Mohalla.

Incorrectly filled forms have emerged as another major issue, with many residents entering wrong electoral details, names or spellings, forcing BLOs to manually verify records and call applicants back, he said.

Some BLOs also claimed that technical issues were encountered in operating the BLO-Net app used for the digitisation process. "Verification exercise was slowed by technical problems with the app in the initial weeks," they claimed.

"The app wouldn't accept updates and kept showing mandatory fields as missing even when everything had been entered. It took me three hours to upload a single form," said one more BLO, adding that the glitches were resolved only after about 15 days.

Still, issues like slow server crop up as the larger number of users uploading forms on the app ahead of the August 8 deadline, he added.