First fortnight of 3-month process over, SIR problems haunt both voters and BLOs
Times of India | 21 November 2025
Kolkata: The first fortnight of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process is over but problems related to filling out enumeration forms still haunt both voters and booth level officers (BLOs).
For voters who stumble over filling out enumeration forms, their confusion mostly involves the lower half of the form due to its "convoluted" or "unclear" language. Even many of the BLOs, having the same confusion, are unable to guide people asking for help. Two weeks into the SIR process, some of the BLOs also discovered that their explanation about the "confusing" part of the form was incorrect due to a "wrong perception".
"While filling out the right side of the lower half, I first wrote my name and then my father's name as my name was not there on the SIR list of 2002. Later, I was told that I was supposed to write my father's name first, not mine. Asking the BLO, I used whitener and made the correction," said Uttiya Ghosh, a New Town resident.
Many applicants have found that ‘Relative's Name' and ‘Relationship' are mismatched in the 2002 SIR roll. "I discovered to my dismay that my husband was mentioned as my father in the 2002 roll. I lost my father in 1994," said a Bonhooghly resident who requested anonymity.
Many people are also confused about the language in which they should fill in the form. Many have complained that the BLOs are asking for different documents like Aadhaar and PAN. However, the EC's norm states that no document is required at the time of form submission.
"My voter card has an incomplete address printed on it. My husband's existing voter card has the wrong spelling of his name as per the 2002 list received from the BLO. We have no clue how and when the corrections will be made," rued Pritha Banerjee, a resident of Anandapur.
Septuagenarian Proloy Sengupta has been living in Lake Gardens since 1980, and he has known Rashbehari to be his constituency. "Our voter cards mention Rashbehari as our assembly constituency, but our names were not shown under it in the portal. Later, we discovered that our names were reflected in the Dhakuria constituency."
Talking to BLOs, TOI found that they were also facing numerous issues — ranging from uploading trouble, locating the voters and incomplete forms to flooding of calls, language problems, and wrong data entry.
A BLO in south Kolkata said: "If we got a clear guideline from the EC, we could have explained the form better to people. Many BLOs like me are confused over the lower half of the form. The lack of guidelines from the EC is responsible for the wrong entry of data by people."
"Locating voters and finding complete forms are big hurdles for us. My phone rings till midnight as people are calling every now and then. But we don't have answers to all of their queries ready," said another BLO in north Kolkata.