Are all citizens equal? Is VIP marking in the BLO app a green channel for certain people?
text_fields
Are all citizens equal before the Election Commission? The introduction of a new ‘VIP mark’ in the app used by Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in the process of SIR enumeration suggests that all citizens are not equal.
The report suggests that the Election Commission has urged BLOs to mark ministers, judges, journalists and other key individuals as VIPs so that they shall not be left out of the electoral roll, in a country where 31 crore citizens have been stripped of their right to vote.
The introduction of the feature in the BLO app is significant, particularly in the middle of the ongoing SIR across 16 states and three Union territories, as such a feature was not available during the SIR process in West Bengal, but it was updated on July 30, with the Apple App Store recording the change as “mark VIP elector related changes”, though no official note from the ECI has come yet, as reported by Hindustan Times.
Questions regarding the timing of the introduction of the feature are yet to be answered, but the BLOs in Delhi and Haryana are reported to have confirmed that they were asked to mark a particular citizen as VIP, and then it will be vetted by the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO), the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and subsequently by the Chief Electoral Officer’s office.
BLOs attached to the Delhi electoral office also confirmed that the order to make this particular move was issued by the Election Commission itself, and these mandates empower local staff to affix a distinctive marker beside influential names following direct doorstep visits.
From the report, it can be deduced that such categorisation of certain groups of citizens in the electoral roll was not new, as provided by the Election Commission of India’s March 2023 Manual on Electoral Rolls, which mandates the marking of MPs, MLAs and MLCs, holders of declared offices, members of the judiciary and public services, and personalities from fields such as journalism, arts, culture and sport as individuals to be considered special, to ensure that they appear in the draft roll.
The VIP marking process becomes controversial if Delhi alone is taken as an example, where there are around 3,000 VIP electors, as per BLO officials, and around 1,000 VIPs in the New Delhi district, with a BLO testifying that it was meant to ensure that their forms were processed without difficulty, in a state where about 47.6 lakh electors have been put under scrutiny in the SIR exercise.
Questions will be raised against the ECI’s system, which otherwise creates preferential treatment for certain groups of citizens in the country, who can be passed through the system even when they face eligibility issues or notices when discrepancies are found, while ordinary citizens have no such privilege.
The ECI maintains that marked electors are not immune from claims and objections or verification. They may still receive notices, although they are to be facilitated during the process and need not necessarily visit hearing centres.