Raipur

Chhattisgarh has started a special voter registration drive. This comes as protests over voter deletion during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) are going on across the country.

Chief Electoral Officer Yashwant Kumar announced the drive at a press conference held at the Raipur Election Office on Friday. He said the campaign started on October 8, based on directives from the Election Commission of India. The goal is simple. Verify voters who were left out during the earlier enrolment process and bring them into the electoral roll.

Young voters are a big focus here. First-time voters and those who have just turned 17 will be actively registered during this one-month special drive.

Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will handle the ground-level work. They will visit schools, colleges, and homes to collect Form 6. They will also set up special camps at designated places so people can submit their forms easily.

Here is the schedule. BLOs will do home visits three days a week. On the other two days, they will set up camps at polling booths. Students at schools and colleges that serve as Electoral Literacy Clubs will also be visited twice a week to collect Form 6 from eligible youth.

SIR updates in Chhattisgarh

Since the SIR process started, Chhattisgarh has already added 2,34,993 new voters. CEO Kumar pointed out that the SIR process began in 2025 with a qualifying date of January 1, 2026. Adding names and making corrections is an ongoing process, he said. No need to wait for a special window if you want your record corrected.

All collected forms will be digitised. After that, the Electoral Registration Officer will review and decide on adding names to the electoral roll.

Senior Congress leader Vikas Upadhyay opposes the government plan for simultaneous national and state elections. Speaking in Raipur, he said this idea is impossible to manage across the country.

Upadhyay mentioned the huge administrative workload involved. India currently uses over 10 lakh polling stations. He believes holding all elections in one go would strain security forces and might put safety at risk. Also, he warned that the Model Code of Conduct could stop government work and stall development projects everywhere.

Concerns about regional democracy

The leader also shared worries about federalism. He argued that holding all elections at once might make voters ignore local needs in favor of national issues. This could reduce how much people can hold their regional leaders accountable.