SIR notice: While West Bengal netas paid for flight tickets for their voters, what will those in Karnataka do?

When Rashmi (name changed), a voter from north Bengaluru, received a notice saying she had been flagged for ‘no mapping’, she was unsure what she was expected to do. The confusion only increased when her father received a call from his Booth Level Officer (BLO) saying that he too had been flagged for no mapping.

According to the father and daughter, they had completed the mapping correctly and provided all the details they could. But with their hearing fixed for September 8 and the family currently in Delhi because of a medical emergency, they are left with no choice but to make a trip back to Bengaluru at short notice or lose their voting rights.

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SIR: How notices will be served and where voters will face hearings

Rashmi’s predicament is likely to be shared by voters across Karnataka, many of whom had only just had the short relief of finding their names in the draft electoral roll before receiving notices.

While many voters completed the enumeration form online themselves, others had family members complete the process on their behalf. Now, only the elector has to appear for the hearing, with failure to do so putting the voting right at risk.

Political parties, too, have little to offer voters beyond informing them about notices. The Congress, BJP and JD(S) have all sought an extension, arguing that the small window between the issue of a notice and the date of hearing leaves them with little time to identify voters, inform them, or even make arrangements for those who are not in the State.

The contrast with West Bengal, where the exercise had triggered lakhs of notices over logical discrepancies, is stark. Political parties there threw their organisational machinery behind the exercise, particularly to bring back voters who had migrated for work.

The BJP, for instance, funded the entire cost of special trains to bring migrant workers from cities such as Surat back to Kolkata so they could appear for hearings and retain their voting rights. West Bengal workers living in Bengaluru had also told The Hindu how they were provided one-way air tickets by their respective MLAs to help them attend hearings.

The Trinamool Congress went beyond arranging travel, launching an ‘identity campaign’ aimed at consolidating its core voter base and building a political narrative around the electoral exercise.

In Karnataka, however, no such mobilisation seems to be taking place even as hearings began on September 5. Instead, political parties say they are still trying to understand the scale of the problem and work out how they can assist voters within the limited time available.

Jagarutha Karnataka, which is working with the Congress, JD(S) State General Secretary and spokesperson H.N. Devaraj, and BJP leader S. Dattatreya, who are monitoring the exercise, said they have started receiving information about notices through BLOs and voters were being informed as and when the parties learnt about the notices .

The parties said the bigger problem was the short gap between the delivery of a notice and the hearing. They said they were now working with Booth Level Agents (BLAs) to help voters reach the venue of the hearing, and assist those who may have to travel from other cities or States. The political representatives also said BLAs had been asked to help voters gather the documents to be produced at the hearing.