PUNE: Voters must brace for a barrage of questions from the booth-level officer (BLO) carrying out the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Among them will be where your parents were registered as voters, the state and the district.In many households, the answers will suffice to complete the verification. For others, particularly families that have migrated to the state in the last 20 years, establishing the family linkage has emerged as the most time-consuming part of the exercise that started on Tuesday.Election officials on Wednesday said once voters provide the state and district where their parents were enrolled in the electoral roll around 2002, along with their names, BLOs will search the Election Commission’s voter portal to trace the record.If multiple entries appear, details such as age, address and polling station are matched before the correct record is identified. “It is not necessary for citizens to remember the EPIC number. If they know the state, district and the name under which their parents were enrolled, the record can generally be traced through the portal,” an election official said.
How to trace a parent’s electoral record
However, voters said that while the process sounds straightforward, locating the correct record often takes time. Common names frequently generate multiple matches from the same district, particularly in densely populated states, requiring BLOs to verify each entry before confirming the family linkage.“My parents migrated to Pune from Uttar Pradesh over three decades ago. We know the district where they voted, but the search throws up several people with similar names. It takes time to verify which record belongs to them,” Mini Mathur, a resident of Hadapsar, said.Residents said the additional time spent on searches could also slow the pace of door-to-door verification drive, as BLOs may have to spend more time at households where older electoral records are not readily traceable.Officials said the district administration would strengthen assistance through the ECI voter helpline 1950 to trace legacy electoral records before or during the verification process.
