Overview
- Odisha’s Chief Electoral Officer RS Gopalan on Monday directed Electoral Registration Officers to pause action on about 2 lakh Form-7 objections and to physically verify at least half of these cases before approving any deletions.
- A door-to-door mapping exercise by Booth Level Officers from January to March flagged roughly 9.8 lakh names for removal for reasons such as death, migration and duplicate entries, a total higher than the usual 7–9 lakh annual deletions.
- Officials confirmed many complaints of wrongful removals, including voters found at home and cases where BLOs did not visit the address, and instructed that notices be served, records kept, and any wrongly removed names be re-enrolled.
- On Wednesday, the Biju Janata Dal protested at the CEO’s office and BJD MP Sasmit Patra asked the Chief Election Commissioner to order statewide reverification, publish constituency-wise data, and deploy an independent audit team, while the Congress sought full reverification of flagged names.
- The Special Intensive Revision, a periodic update of voter rolls deferred from April to likely mid-May, will resume after these checks, and voters can call the 1950 helpline to confirm their status or file complaints.