SIR: Civil society groups to conduct social audit in Kodagu on September 29 over deletions

Civil society organizations, including Eddelu Karnataka, plan to perform a thorough examination of the preliminary voter list in Kodagu on September 29. Their representatives will publicly read the draft roll and the ASDDO (Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead, and Others) list to verify its accuracy against the pre-SIR polling station-wise electoral roll.

The findings will be shared with Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar on September 30. The scrutiny aims to identify individuals who have been wrongly marked for deletion under the ASDDO category, and those who reside in the area but did not receive voter registration forms. Prior to the SIR, civil society groups conducted training and a pilot survey in H.D.

Kote taluk, visiting around 1,441 families. Using the original and updated electoral rolls, village heads, gram panchayat members, local leaders, and anganwadi workers conducted door-to-door verifications of over 5,000 voter names with household heads or members, correcting names, addresses, dates of birth, and other details on forms like Form 6 for inclusion and Form 8 for corrections.

Kodagu's rugged terrain presented significant accessibility challenges for Booth Level Officers during the mapping and distribution of enumeration forms, with several areas unreachable by two-wheelers and requiring foot travel. Civil society groups argue that the lack of access may have excluded residents from the SIR process, particularly those in tribal regions who face difficulties in obtaining required documents.

Many tribal workers, including bonded laborers, lack personal documents, with Aadhaar cards and other identification papers often held by contractors. Frequent migration and job-related relocations further complicate proof of residence for some individuals. While official data shows that Kodagu had the highest mapping rate before the SIR began (over 98%), over 8% of the electorate was marked under the ASDDO categories and subsequently deleted.