New Delhi: There was pressure on the district administration to strike off roughly 3,000 names from the electoral roll once the draft roll came out during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Karnataka’s Davanagere district, Deputy Commissioner (DC) G.M. Gangadharaswamy said on Tuesday (October 6). He underlined that authorities had no power to delete the names of voters suo motu.During the SIR process, a total of 2,325 Form 7 applications asking for deletions were filed across the district’s seven assembly constituencies, all of them online, he said, as per a Deccan Herald report.Giving a breakdown, the DC said 1,106 of the 2,325 Form 7 applications were turned down. Among those that were accepted, just 112 voters were actually dropped from the roll – five of them were Nepal nationals and one lived in Dubai, while the rest had either died or moved elsewhere.Gangadharaswamy added: “No mass submission of Form 7 applications was made in any polling station area in the district. Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) of the respective constituencies have submitted confirmation letters to this effect. Hence, no cases have been registered in the district in this regard.”Also read: Karnataka SIR: Bijapur DC Orders Inquiry into Alleged Fake Death Certificates Used to Delete VotersHe mentioned that the district has so far received 24,012 Forms 6, 6A, 7 and 8 applications, which cover new registration, change of residence, objections and corrections. Of 19,118 applications for new voter registration, 16,886 were approved.In Davangere, notices were sent to 7,086 individualsAs per the draft electoral roll, Davanagere has 1,298,219 voters. Under the SIR process, notices were sent to 7,086 individuals.On September 29, the Election Commission announced that EROs are allowed to close notice cases without holding hearings or collecting documents. However, in Davanagere, hearings have already been held in 6,733 cases, while 353 people did not respond to the notice, Gangadharaswamy said.ECI has not put anything in writing so far and is simply walking officials through the changes with a video made by its IT Department after enabling fresh features on its ERONET portal that allows EROs to generate notices without scheduling a hearing date and dispose of cases where electors have not submitted papers. For electors served notices over “logical discrepancies” and “no mapping”, the EC has listed 12 acceptable documents.As per the video related to the new ERONET portal recorded on October 1, if a notice has gone out and the Booth Level Officer (BLO) has uploaded documents, the ERO can mark the elector “found OK” for the final roll without a hearing order. However, some EROs are wary of using their discretion without a written order.BijapurIn Karnataka’s Bijapur district, Deputy Commissioner and District Election Officer (DEO) K. Anand has directed an inquiry after receiving a memorandum from at least eight residents on Saturday (October 3) alleging that forged death certificates were used to remove their names from electoral rolls during the ongoing SIR exercise.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.