SIR: Filled Form-7 targeting Muslim voters surface in Belagavi; BLOs allege they were pressured to sign
BLOs allege they were pressured to sign, and say that two men, claiming to be from the Belagavi City Corporation, brought a bulk of Form-7 applications seeking deletion of only Muslim names.
Several Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in Odisha's Dhamnagar Assembly seat complained about hundreds of Form 7 applications being uploaded in their names without their knowledge during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. The Form 7 applications were used to request the deletion of voters' names. On September 4, 10 BLOs filed a police complaint and approached the Bhadrak District Collector.
The BJD, the main opposition party, submitted a memorandum to the Odisha Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) about the issue. The Election Commission of India (ECI) suspended Santosh Kumar Nayak, the Executive Officer of the Dhamnagar council and Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) for the SIR exercise. Nayak allegedly used the credentials of BLOs to submit the bulk deletion applications.
The applications were withdrawn, and most of the voters affected by the fraudulent deletions were included in the final electoral roll released on September 21. The BLOs claimed most of the voters flagged via Form 7s had been validated during the enumeration round and were present in the 2002 SIR.
Written by urgent.news from The Indian Express's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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