Uttarakhand SIR: 90,000 voters must choose to retain service status or remain on local list
DEHRADUN: As the Election Commission of India (ECI) prepares to launch Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Uttarakhand, nearly 90,000 voters serving in the military or paramilitary forces must choose between retaining their registration as a 'service voter' or remaining on their ancestral village's voter list. General voters whose names appear on both urban and rural voter lists must also opt to remove one registration. The Chief Electoral Officer's office is currently engaged in pre-SIR mapping activities to streamline the electoral database. According to data released in January 2025, Uttarakhand registered 89,812 Service Voterscomprising 87,103 men and 2,709 womenprimarily serving in the Army or paramilitary forces. These individuals are currently registered based on their service location. With the SIR imminent, the Election Office has appealed to all Service Voters to select one registrationeither within the state's general list or their service-based listand initiate the removal of the other. According to the Election Office, any voter wishing to retain their vote in a specific village or city must formally request the deletion of their name from the Service Voter list via the dedicated portal: svp.eci.gov.in. The current electoral roll for the Uttrakhand, finalised in January, shows a total of 8,429,459 voters, including 4,364,667 males, 4,064,488 females, and 304 voters from the Third Gender category. A common confusion among voters is the fear that removing their name from the village list might disqualify them from participating in local elections, such as those for 'Pradhan' (village head) or municipal bodies. The Election Office clarified that the SIR process pertains strictly to the ECI's electoral rolls used for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Dr. Vijay Kumar Jogdande, Additional Chief Electoral Officer of Uttarakhand, emphasized the urgency: All Service Voters must ensure their vote is confirmed in only one location. According to the rules, no one can have a vote in two places. After deletion, if the need arises, a vote can be re-registered anew at any time. The responsibility for Panchayat or municipal elections lies with the State Election Commission, which maintains a separate voter list entirely unrelated to this process, an official noted. The critical reason for this consolidation is legal compliance. Holding registration in two constituencies simultaneously can lead to legal complications. The ECI has made it clear that voters must maintain their name on only one electoral rolleither urban or rural.
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