Revenue Officials’ Boycott of SIR Makes no Impact in Tamil Nadu

Chennai: The boycott of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, announced by a section of State revenue department officials, made no impact on the enumeration process that continued without any hitch though the opening of camps at the polling booths made the job of the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) easy on Tuesday.

While the union office bearers of the revenue department said that their members kept off the enumeration process, the effect was not felt as they formed only a portion of BLOs involved in the massive exercise, in which booth agents representing political parties are also active participants.

With the authorities opening the camps at the polling booths in Chennai, the BLOs waited for the voters to visit them and hand over the fill up enumeration forms. Till yesterday, the BLOs were on their toes to collect the forms that they had distributed to the voters earlier.

Since many voters were flummoxed by the details sought in the forms, they kept the papers aside and went about their regular work putting the BLOs in a fix and they had to make repeated visits and explain to them what had been asked in the forms and what needed to be spelt out.

The camps in the booths would go on for a week when the authorities feel that all the forms could be collected back.