Signing you in

From unnumbered houses, confusing addresses to an average elector’s inability to fill the form — booth level officers or BLOs in the East Delhi district say that they are facing a race against time to make sure no eligible electors are left out.

The Election Commission of India earlier this week extended the deadline for the ongoing door-to-door visits to August 8, giving BLOs more time to distribute and collect enumeration forms in Delhi.

It’s a humid July afternoon. As Vivek Kumar, an English teacher and BLO of Mangal Bazaar’s Block F in East Delhi, enters the street where he is supposed to distribute enumeration forms, he seeks help from passersby to locate the addresses on his list.

Explaining the process to the residents, he gives a suggestion, “Please get the forms photocopied so that you can make mistakes.” Most enumeration forms he gets, he adds, are riddled with mistakes. To place the residents of the house, he scans the list — the woman in the house is on Page 18 of his list, while her son is on Page 31. Around 45 minutes have passed and they realise that the woman’s husband is assigned to another BLO.

Around 10 km away is the Chilla Village near the Yamuna. A foul stench pervades the entire colony as open drains remain clogged with garbage. BLO Vinay Kumar is also facing a slew of challenges. As he knocks on the door of the house of 55-year old Brahm Chand to collect the form he had given a couple days back, the resident gives a confused look. “Humse nahi bhara jaave form, tu bharde humara. (We are not able to fill this… you please fill on our behalf).”

A tired Vinay sits inside the house and ends up spending more than 30 minutes as he fills the forms of the family of five. The 31-year old explains that most people in the village don’t have fixed addresses. “While villagers might know each other, so many people are tenants. Sometimes, 15 families are renting out different rooms in one house… it gets very confusing,” Vinay says, adding he has to fill out the forms of most people since they don’t know how to read or write. Next, he goes and sits at the verandah of the house — a lot of people come to clear doubts. “If I can’t place myself on electoral rolls, will I be sent to Bangladesh?” asks 60-year old Anisha Khatum, who has a voter ID, but is not able to find herself or any relative in the 2002 electoral list. A neighbour tells her not to worry. She can show her widower’s pension slip when she is sent a notice, she is told.

An election official explains, “In areas like Chilla Village and Kotla Village, a lot of the electors are labourers who are uneducated and don’t understand the process. Also, many of them don’t have any proof of where their parents lived since they even moved around and lived on rent.”