Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer has decided to request the Election Commission of India for additional time to complete the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, as Booth Level Officers have reported that nearly 17.7 percent of voter enumeration forms could not be collected.
According to senior officials, the decision on extending the deadline could be announced anytime before December 11.
Earlier, the date for filling the forms was extended from December 4 to December 11. Uttar Pradesh has over 15.44 crore registered voters. As per the Election Commission’s internal progress report, 97.3 percent work of digitising the collected forms has already been completed.
Officials said around 80 percent of the forms have been returned, while 17.7 percent could not be collected at all. The volume of uncollected forms is significant, prompting Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa to urge political parties to assist in ensuring the forms are submitted by eligible citizens.
He has directed District Election Officers to verify whether these forms are genuinely unavailable or if more efforts are needed to reach the remaining households.
Currently, December 11 is the last date for filling and returning the forms. Sources indicated that considering the state’s request, the Election Commission may grant an additional week to ensure that no eligible voter is left out.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath reviewed the progress of the revision exercise during his visit to Ghaziabad. He described the special drive as a booster dose for democracy and asked party representatives to identify illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators and ensure their names are removed from the voter list. He also asked that necessary legal action be taken and the process to send them to detention centres be initiated.
The Chief Minister advised elected representatives to minimize their attendance at social functions and instead spend more time among citizens to support the ongoing work. He held similar meetings in Agra and Moradabad to check the progress of the special revision.
Yogi called for efforts to ensure that all eligible voters are enrolled, especially newly married women who often end up having two entries in voter lists at their parental and marital homes. He said representatives must reach out to such households to ensure that each voter has only one valid entry and that no discrepancies disrupt the enumeration process.
The state administration now awaits the Election Commission’s decision on extending the deadline, which will determine the pace of the final phase of the revision exercise.
