Ministers, MPs, bureaucrats get SIR notices
Among the 33 lakh people who have received notices in the national Capital for discrepancies and no mapping as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls are several serving and former ministers and bureaucrats, including one of the serving Election Commissioners of India, Dr Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, his daughter, Pratibha, Union Minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar, CBI Director Praveen Sood, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey and Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister Ajay Kumar Sood.
Others who received notices include Union Health Secretary Punya Salila, former Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi and his wife, former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, former Delhi minister Kailash Gahlot, Lok Sabha MP Bansuri Swaraj.
The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Delhi, on Sunday clarified that receiving a notice did not mean that a voter’s name would be removed from the electoral roll. “System-generated notices are being issued to the above-mentioned categories to correct their data in ECINET. No name can be deleted without giving an opportunity of being heard and a proper, speaking and appealable order,” the CEO said. “Therefore, there is no existential crisis as is being brought out in social and print media,” he added. According to the CEO’s latest press note, electors appearing in the draft roll have been categorised into those who have mapped or linked themselves, or their progeny entries, with electoral rolls of the last intensive revision and those who could not establish such a link.
Among the top bureaucrats who received discrepancies and no mapping notices are Fisheries Secretary Abhilaksh Likhi, his wife Sukriti Likhi, also a serving secretary at the Department of Ex-service Men’s Welfare, Union Fertiliser Secretary Rajat Kumar Mishra, and Union Land Resources Secretary Narendra Bhooshan. They are among the people who remained “unmapped with the Last SIR”.
Election Commissioner Dr Sukhbir Singh Sandhu was served a notice citing a mismatch in the spelling of his name in electoral records. The District Election Office, New Delhi, has clarified that Sandhu’s name has been verified. “The electoral entry pertaining to Dr SS Sandhu has already been validated and kept in the list for inclusion in the final electoral roll, which is scheduled for official publication on November 4,” it added. Sandhu’s name is registered as an elector in Delhi Cantt.
Advani, 98, his daughter, Pratibha, and daughter-in-law, Geetika, have been issued notices after their names could not be mapped to the 2002 SIR electoral roll, while his son Jayant has cleared the mapping exercise. All four are voters in the New Delhi Assembly constituency. As a result, they will have to again establish their eligibility through documents from the 12 categories specified by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Jaishankar and his wife also featured in the list of voters issued notices during the SIR exercise. Their names were reportedly flagged because they could not be mapped to the previous SIR electoral roll. According to sources in the ECI, the poll body has received the required documents from Jaishankar and his wife following the issuance of notices. The submission of documents is part of the verification process under the ongoing electoral roll revision. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri has been listed under the “unmapped with the Last SIR” category.
Expenditure Secretary Vumlunmang Vualnam, Fertiliser Secretary Rajat Kumar Mishra and Land Resources Secretary Narendra Bhooshan have also received notices under the same category. Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) K Sanjay Murthy, a former IAS officer, has received a notice for “parent name mismatch”. Several retired bureaucrats and officials have also received notices for discrepancies. Among them are former NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya, former JNU vice-chancellor and UGC chairman Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, former animal husbandry secretary Alka Upadhyay, former consumer affairs secretary Rohit Kumar Singh, his wife and former CISF director-general Nina Singh, former defence secretary Giridhar Aramane, and former environment secretary Leena Nandan.
Their names appear on the list of people for whom notices have been issued at the New Moti Bagh polling booth under the Delhi Cantt Assembly constituency, where most top bureaucrats have their official residences. In all, 593 people have received notices for reasons at the booth.
Former Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi and his wife, former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Desai, her husband Prakash Desai, son and advocate Mike Desai, and daughter-in-law Sakshi Desai have also received notices after being classified as unmapped with the previous SIR records.
Former deputy CM Manish Sisodia, a voter in the New Delhi assembly constituency, was issued a notice, but the reason was not specified. His wife, Seema, and son, Meer, are also on the list. His wife has been flagged for a self-name mismatch, while Meer has been flagged for a parent-name mismatch.
Gahlot, former minister in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and presently a BJP MLA, was also flagged for no mapping. His wife Moushumi Mishra Gahlot and elder daughter Jahnavi Gahlot were also served notices for the same discrepancy.
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, former Union minister Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Subramanian Swamy were among more than 3.16 million voters served notices for “discrepancies”. Of the electors flagged by poll authorities, 1,379,785 were in the “no mapping” category and 1,933,134 were tagged as bearing “logical discrepancies”. To be sure, the two categories account for 3,312,919 electors.
