BLAs of recognised political parties permitted to submit up to 50 enumeration forms a day: CEO

The Election Commission has permitted booth level agents (BLAs) of recognised political parties to submit up to 50 enumeration forms per day, before the publication of the draft electoral rolls, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Archana Patnaik said on Sunday.

 The BLAs must also submit a list of application forms with an undertaking that he/she has personally verified the particulars of the form and is satisfied that they are correct.

Content to be digitised

The CEO said the booth level officers would digitise the content after verification, and submit them to the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer/Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) concerned.

The ERO would scrutinise the forms as and when received, and take appropriate action as required, on a case-to-case basis, she added.

The active participation of the BLAs of the recognised political parties, who are among the major stakeholders of elections, is required for the successful completion of the SIR exercise, the CEO said.

Meanwhile, the office of the CEO said enumeration forms had been distributed to 17,743 electors in the Tamil Nadu urban habitat tenement settlement at Perumbakkam in Sholinganallur Assembly constituency.

Claims clarified

In a social media post, the office of the CEO sought to clarify claims that the entries of many in the resettlement site — which has 22,658 registered electors — had reportedly been dropped as the ‘system’ could not find them.

“Additional officials have been deployed to assist the BLOs, and distribution to the remaining electors will be completed,” it added.