35 years apart, one SIR verification brings two brothers home

For 35 years, Sitaram's family in Haryana's Jind district had no idea where he was.

They had searched for him after he disappeared from a polio treatment centre in Punjab's Sangrur, but as the years passed without a trace, they eventually lost hope of finding him. At one point, the family even presumed that Sitaram was dead.

Then, last Wednesday, an old school record and a phone call changed everything.

Sitaram, now 55 and living in Amritsar, had returned to his native Manoharpur village to collect his School Leaving Certificate from the Government Senior Secondary School where he had studied up to Class 10. He needed the document for verification as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Punjab.

When Sitaram arrived at the principal's office, Additional Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) Dr Ramesh Kumar and other officials were present. He told them that although he had studied up to Class 10, he had not passed the examination and needed his SLC to submit to officials in Punjab.

Ramesh asked Booth Level Officer Krishan Kumar, who is also a teacher at the school and a resident of Manoharpur, to gather details about Sitaram and his family to establish his identity.

Krishan asked Sitaram about his village, father and family members.

Sitaram mentioned Manoharpur and then gave them his brother's name, Dalbir. Surprisingly, Krishan knew Dalbir. He called him. On hearing Sitaram's name, Dalbir immediately recognised him.

“Yes, he is my brother. I have been searching for him for the last 35 years,” he told the BLO, according to reports. He then rushed to the school.

When the brothers came face-to-face, years of separation gave way to an emotional reunion. They hugged and broke down in tears. Sitaram reportedly touched his elder brother's feet.

“Everyone in the room became emotional,” Ramesh recalled.

The brothers had been separated under circumstances that had left a lasting wound on the family.

Sitaram had been admitted to a polio treatment centre in Sangrur when he was young. About a month later, when his family returned to check on him, staff told them he had left the facility. The family searched for him but could not find him.

Years turned into decades, and eventually the family lost hope of finding him. But Sitaram had left the treatment centre for a reason of his own: he later explained that he did not want to burden his family with the costs and difficulties associated with his condition.

His life thereafter unfolded in Punjab. He worked at different places, including as a peon at a private school, before eventually securing a stable Group-D government job. He went on to live in Amritsar, away from his family in Manoharpur.

Sitaram is the fifth of six brothers. For Dalbir and the rest of the family, his absence had become a 35-year-old unanswered question. Now, that question has an answer.

After their reunion, the brothers left the school together on a scooter to meet the rest of their family, an unexpectedly simple end to a separation that had lasted three-and-a-half decades. The reunion also offered an unusual human moment amid Haryana's ongoing SIR exercise, which is aimed at checking and updating the state's electoral rolls.

The Election Commission has extended the deadline for filing claims and objections under Haryana's SIR to September 30, while the final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on November 6. The state has already received more than 87,000 applications for inclusion through Form 6, besides thousands of applications seeking deletion or correction of entries.

The Haryana government has also said that an eligible voter's name cannot be deleted merely because old electoral records or documents are unavailable, with eligibility to be assessed on the basis of available documents and the Election Commission's rules.

For most, SIR is a process of checking names, addresses and electoral records. For one family in Manoharpur, it became something far more personal.

An electoral roll verification, an old school record and one phone call had done what 35 years could not, reunited two brothers.