Monks and nuns may have renounced all the bonds of worldly life – and many of them do not vote – but they, too, are being called for SIR (Special Intensive Revision) hearings, primarily to list the names of their spiritual gurus under the ‘Names of Parents’ column in the electoral records.Taking cognizance of the inconvenience caused by monastic orders, the Election Commission (EC) has directed District Election Officers (DEOs) to hold hearings at ashrams and religious institutions instead of asking monks to travel to designated centres. In cases where supporting documents are unavailable, the DEO – who is the district magistrate – has been authorized to act as a quasi-judicial authority and clear the voter applications.The issue came to light when several monks received hearing notices due to address and identity mismatch due to years of transfer between ashrams. Eighty-two-year-old Swami Mukti Kamanand, president of the century-old Gadadhar Ashram (Ramakrishna Math) in Bhawanipur, south Kolkata, said his voter ID card and Base He was associated with a Ramakrishna Math in Bankura (over 200 km from Kolkata), where he lived for a long time. “Initially I was asked to attend a hearing in Bankura, but after the intervention of election officials, I submitted my counting form in Bhawanipur itself,” he said.Last Wednesday, around 90 monks attended a special SIR camp held at Belur Math, the hearing of which took place at the Abhedananda Convention Centre. The participants included residents of the Belur headquarters as well as monks from centers such as the Ramakrishna Mission Ashram in Narendrapur. While the monks of Ramakrishna Math and Mission do not vote, they seek to be included in the electoral rolls to avoid complications in visa applications and administrative work.Bharat Sevashram Sangh (BSS) and ISKCON monks, many of whom vote, have also received SIR notices. Swami Mahadevananda of the BSS said that many monks had listed the name of founder Acharya Swami Pranavananda as their parents, leading to a mismatch in the documents. General secretary Dilip Maharaj said the monks without passports attended a special hearing at the Ballygunge headquarters on January 20.ISKCON spokesperson Radharaman Das said monks who had earlier voted in Kolkata were asked to submit fresh documents from their native places in India and abroad.avoid elephantsVoters of Jhargram and West Midnapore in Bengal’s Jangalmahal, about 150 km from Kolkata, have learned to co-exist with elephants over the years. It’s a kind of mutual respect, born of a certain caution—and a tacit understanding: “Stay out of my hair, and I’ll stay out of yours.”During SIR, the regular movement of elephants coincides with a sudden increase in human movement – residents with voter detail discrepancies are having to travel long distances to reach listening centres, an extremely unsafe practice. And, so, when both the district administrations wanted to set up multiple hearing centers located near human settlements in the six assembly constituencies, the election body said yes.
Similar arrangements are being planned in the elephant-dominated areas of North Bengal.In West Midnapore, voters from selected Jangalmahal villages will attend the hearing at Pirakata Community Hall, under the jurisdiction of Salboni police station. Salboni BDO Ruman Mandal said residents of villages like Kalsibhanga, Satpati, Kalaimuri, Garmal, Lalgaria and Bhimpur were directed to attend the new center from January 15. Medinipur Sadar sub-divisional officer Madhumita Mukherjee said it was a deliberate decision to choose additional centers based on how close they were to the villages, so that hearings could be conducted based on the movement of elephants in real time.West Midnapore DM Bijin Krishna said, “Ten additional centers have been set up in the district, including a consolidated site for villages from the two assembly constituencies in the elephant corridors.” In Jhargram, special hearing centers have been set up in 10 high schools in Nayagram, Gopiballavpur, Jhargram and Binpur constituencies. DM Akanksha Bhaskar said that these steps have been taken in the interest of public safety.where work is proofIn the districts of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur in North Bengal, employment records issued by tea gardens and cinchona plantations are valid proof of identity and residence for workers and their families.Workers on tea and cinchona plantations – many of whom have been living in temporary quarters for generations – have struggled to produce traditional documents such as land records or formal proof of address.
As a result, during the SIR hearing, they were unable to come up with those documents, giving rise to the fear of disenfranchisement. Plantation employment records are regularly maintained by the plantation authorities, and now that they have been recognized by the Commission as a genuine voter eligibility document, it is a huge relief for the workers.Leaders of all political parties welcomed the move, but while BJP MP Jayant Roy described it as an “excellent step”, TMC Rajya Sabha MP Prakash Chik Badaik said the move should have been taken much earlier and the delay had created unnecessary panic.Special session for vulnerable tribal groups and sex workersMembers of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) have welcomed the Election Commission’s decision to conduct doorstep verification, amid concerns over document availability and identity mismatch.In Totopara, home to the Toto community (the state’s smallest PVTG) in Alipurduar in north Bengal, residents said the move has eased concerns over land and identity records. Bakul Toto, secretary of Toto Kalyan Samiti, said, “Many families do not have land khatian, while migrant workers do not have links to ancestral property. We were worried, but the Election Commission has taken extra precautions.”
Similar issues have also emerged among the Birhor and Lodha Shabar communities. Around 300 Birhors live in south Bengal’s Purulia district – in Balrampur, Baghmundi and Jhalda-I blocks, of which 181 are listed in the adult 2024 Lok Sabha voter list. In forest-dependent areas, many Birhor families now live in permanent houses provided by the state, but discrepancies in records have led to SIR hearings.Lodha Shabar members spread in West Midnapore and Jhargram are also receiving notices. The community consists of more than 1 lakh people from about 17,000 families. The district administration had raised concerns over whether the members had sufficient documents, following which the Election Commission had on December 31 last year directed the DEOs to conduct physical verification.In West Midnapore, Lodha Shabar residents are attending the hearing at the block development offices. In Keshiyari block, many villagers were called despite not submitting details during the enumeration. “We presented voter ID card, Aadhaar and family details at the hearing,” said Basanti Dandpat of Lengamara village.West Bengal Lodha Shabar Development Board chairman Balai Naik said teams were visiting villages to reassure residents. “There is no need to panic. In cases of spelling errors or linkage issues, officials will verify the details at the ground level,” he said.Similar “special public hearings” have also been ordered for sex workers, as many of them do not have identity proof.Officials said district election officers have been directed to hear such cases separately and adopt a facilitative approach, considering that many sex workers have been cut off from their families for decades or do not know the names of their parents.For Baby Khatoon, 55, who lives in Sonagachi, Kolkata’s biggest red light district, when she arrived there at the age of 10, news of the hearing was nerve-wracking. “I only remember that my family lived in Kidderpore. I don’t know the names of my parents,” she said. Having no close relatives, he claimed his landlord as his guardian. “How can I prepare a family tree? I don’t even know their names. I’m afraid my name will be removed,” she said.Rekha Das, another sex worker, has a voter and Aadhaar card, but she faced difficulty in enrolling her son, a first-time voter, as the form requires the name of a blood relative on the mother’s side. “I have documents, but no family records,” he said.Election Commission officials said the concerns were genuine and assured that no eligible voter would be removed from the rolls merely because of lack of documents, stressing that the objective of the SIR is inclusion, not exclusion.– Tamghna Banerjee, Sujoy KhanraPinak Priya Bhattacharya, Sudipto Das, Paulami Roy Banerjee and Tanuja Singh Deo
