Pune: Citizens getting calls from strangers claiming to be election officials on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) duty must be vigilant. They could be cheats looking to swindle people. The current drive across the state does not require sharing of any personal, financial or bank details.The electoral drive across the state has given fraudsters a window to impersonate polling officials to target voters during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Civil society activists have urged Maharashtra election authorities to launch a wider public awareness campaign to prevent citizens, particularly seniors, from falling prey to cyber scams.During a meeting with senior election officials on Monday, activists said fraudsters were contacting voters under the pretext of assisting with SIR documentation and verification to obtain personal or financial information. They urged the Election Commission of India to widely publicise warnings and send SMS alerts cautioning voters against such fraud.Activist Rajendra Chavan wrote to Chief Electoral Officer S Chockalingam citing two alleged cases involving senior citizens from Thane who received suspicious messages after submitting their SIR forms online.In one case, a voter allegedly lost Rs 6.3 lakh after receiving an SMS claiming there was a mismatch in his SIR documents. “The message directed the voter to call a cellphone number, following which he was allegedly persuaded to install a fraudulent application,” Chavan said. A police complaint has been filed.In the second case, another voter received a similar message but did not respond.“Both messages carried identical words and ended with a similar signature, suggesting they may have originated from the same fraudulent network,” Chavan told TOI. He agreed that the source of the messages was yet to be established, and added that activists had requested election authorities to investigate whether there was any compromise of data linked to the SIR process.Election officials, however, maintained that there was no evidence of any data leak from the SIR system. Chockalingam on Monday said that the issue was taken up with cybercrime authorities and that public warnings were being issued. He accepted the suggestion to publicise the warnings more widely and send SMS alerts to voters.Chavan said he had urged the CEO’s office to conduct a forensic audit of the SIR enumeration portal, strengthen monitoring of access to voter data—particularly records of senior citizens—and issue prominent public advisories clarifying that the Election Commission of India never tells voters to install third-party applications or resolve document discrepancies through cellphone numbers.Election officials said voters have been repeatedly advised to rely only on official Election Commission of India platforms and remain vigilant against cyber fraudsters posing as poll personnel. They added that SMS advisories and public awareness messages are being issued to caution citizens against such scams.“We are sending out advisories telling people to be careful. Our BLOs are directly calling up citizens and ensuring that they reach out to them. The BLOs have their ID cards,” a senior state poll official said.
