Bengaluru: The Election Commission Saturday assured that the problem of missing 2002 electoral rolls for parts of Mahadevapura assembly segment, which left thousands of voters struggling to complete their Special Intensive Revision (SIR) forms, will be resolved by Sunday.“The issue is largely due to slow servers caused by heavy traffic. We have taken it up with the e-governance department, which is upgrading server capacity. I met representatives on Friday and am seeking reports from the concerned officials,” chief electoral officer Anbuk Kumar told TOI.The issue surfaced at voter facilitation centres after residents from around 10 villages said their names could not be linked to the 2002 electoral rolls that the EC is using to verify existing voters. Without that linkage, booth level officers (BLOs) are marking such cases as having “no linkage with last SIR”, requiring voters to establish their eligibility during the claims and objections period beginning in Aug.Parents’ EPIC details helped complete many forms. Where they were unavailable, married applicants were linked through their spouse’s EPIC. Others, especially those unfamiliar with online services, struggled to trace old records, while slow servers further delayed the process.Even the mapped data available with BLOs contained errors. At Nallurhalli booth 314, deceased voter Jareen Taj appeared as H Ramaiah from another locality. “Scanning the QR code on the electoral forms does not mean correct details turn up,” said Kiran, a booth level agent, who manually corrected mismatched records.At a facilitation centre in Immadihalli, several voters were not mapped at all. Some also entered their 2025 details in the section meant for 2002 records. “Keep your documents ready for the next phase, and make sure you follow through till the final list. We want to ensure genuine voters do not miss out just because they did not keep documents ready for verification,” BLO Ravi R told voters.Social worker GN Srinivas claimed the 2002 rolls for villages including Gandhipura, Hagaduru, Immadihalli, Nagondahalli, Whitefield and Nallurhalli were unavailable, potentially affecting 30,000 to 40,000 voters. ”The complete 2002 list is not found anywhere, not even with political parties,” Srinivas said. “If educated did not find 2002 records on the ECI portals, what chance do the uneducated stand.”Protesters highlighting alleged lapses in enumeration were taken into preventive custody outside the chief electoral officer’s office.
