New Delhi: Like the Booth Level Officers (BLO) in Bihar who asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to accept Aadhaar cards as documentary proof for voters, election officers in Maharashtra also appealed to the ECI to make the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) easier for voters.Starting at least as early as in May, top officials in charge of the SIR in Maharashtra proposed measures to the ECI to ease the burden on voters and officials. But their requests were ignored or no action was taken, says a report in the Economic Times.Speaking to election officials across Bihar and Maharashtra, ET‘s Anubhuti Vishnoi reports that the CEO of the latter state even recommended putting off SIR until the local body elections were completed. But this request was not accepted by the ECI.CEO S. Chockalingam suggested a simpler enumeration formonly a week after phase III of SIR was announced for 19 states and Union Territories, including his state of Maharashtra. The idea was to pre-fill voter details from the previous SIR, and allow voters to sign off against changes or corrections.The BLOs could then have relied on paperwork, rather than making ground visits and conducting document verification as well as voters having to fill out forms from scratch. To assess voter records that had actual errors, not just minor discrepancies, and keep those aside, would have been much easier.ECI, however, was unresponsive to these significant suggestions, sources in the know indicated to ET.By allowing voters to sign off on any discrepancy, the lakhs of exclusions due to so-called logical discrepancies would have been sorted too, sources told the publication.“The CEO has demanded that EROs be allowed to decide cases involving “logical discrepancies” after conducting a hearing,” NDTV reported.On September 26, the ECI gave EROs discretion to exempt people flagged for logical discrepancies from personal hearings.Also read: Form 6, Form 7, Form 8: SIR Puts Statutory Voter Forms at Odds With Its SoftwareOn the whole, however, it fell on individual CEOs, EROs, BLOs and others closer to the ground, where voters live, to make the process as easy as they could in each state or region, the ET report suggests.One senior election official told ET on condition of anonymity that they wrote to the ECI about logical discrepancies introduced in the second phase of the SIR as well as bulk Form 7s being filed to exclude or remove voters. Again, little, if anything was done in response.“At our own level, we gave instructions to include such people in the roll without further harassment or document checks. The BLO was anyway able to identify and establish the same easily,” said official, referring to exclusions based on logical discrepancies.The ECI has classified minor spelling errors, detail mismatches or other factors such as age gap between parents and children or siblings to mark voters as ineligible, forcing them to contest their exclusion in the draft rolls.The same official said to ET that bulk Form 7s were rejected as the ground staff managing the voter lists could verify valid voters personally. Many of the applications were simply unfounded.In West Bengal, as The Wire recently reported, the numbers indicated that the Election Commission itself was filing Form 7 objections against the inclusion of voters.Also read: ‘ECI Obligated to Ensure That All Citizens Are on Voter List’: Bombay High Court Slams SIRIn 26 constituencies with a 35.6% Muslim population on average, the number of voters facing removal via state-driven appeals exceeds the margin by which the seats were won in 2026, the report found.In Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as well, bulk Form 7 applications have generated controversies, The Wire has reported. In both states, the CEOs have launched inquiries and the prosecution of errant election officials is on the cards.Recent reports suggest that judges in charge of 19 appellate tribunals in West Bengal also complained about errors in the ECINet portal set up to manage voter registration and the appeals process. But they, too, were reportedly ignored and the errors delayed an already slow appeal process.Incidentally, the CEO, Maharashtra, has once again demanded more powers for local polling officials, the EROs in particular. NDTV recently reported that Chockalingam, who holds the principal secretary rank, wrote to ECI seeking four changes in the ECINet software during the notice phase of the SIR.His demands echoed those of the two Election Commissioners at the ECI headquarters, whose internal observations recently came to light in an Indian Express expose.In all, 13 crore voters have been excluded in the draft or final lists of voters prepared under the SIR across the country. The massive shrinking of India’s voter base has sparked Opposition protests against the ECI over both the process it has followed and the purpose they allege has been behind it.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.