Hyderabad:In wake of the Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) decision to organise gram sabha and ward sabha meetings at all polling stations on August 27, the Congress is all gearing up to mobilise voters for the event. The party intends to not only utilise it only to help voters find their names in the draft electoral roll, but also raise issues with booth level officers and other officials.

As per the memo issued by the CEO on August 21, the agenda of the sabhas on August 27 would include reading out the names of all the voters by the local BLO, ascertaining reasons for those who have left out, submission of Form-6 (new voter), Form-7 (objection to inclusion of names) and Form-8 (seeking certain corrections) as needed, provide clarity to voters regarding the documents needed for backing their claims for inclusion in the voter roll, besides discussion on issues related to the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll.

According to Congress sources, it was only after continuous persuasion by the party leadership that the CEO had agreed to conduct the sabhas. “We had urged the CEO to emulate Jharkhand which conducted the exercise on August 15,” a member of the Congress Election Commission coordination committee said. “We are mobilising voters to avail this opportunity.”

The Congress will hold a virtual coordination meeting on Monday, to be attended by key state leaders, besides district party presidents, legislators, Assembly constituency incharges, coordinators and booth-level agents. “We want to make sure that people utilise this opportunity and remain available at the designated place on August 27. Not only draft voter list, but also ASDD list will be discussed. Voters may raise issues with BLOs and also escalate it to AERO or EROs and also fill relevant forms towards safeguarding their votes,” the leader added.

The number of polling stations has gone up from 35,985 to 36,353 following the latest rationalisation by the Election Commission of India. Hyderabad district now has 4,094 polling stations, up from 4,062. A total of 2,64,87,219 voters were included in the draft electoral roll on August 17, while the number of the ‘absent, shifted, dead, and duplicate’ voters stood at 73.39 lakh. The period of filing claims and objections will continue till September 16.

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