BENGALURU: It will come as a big relief to 2,936 additional assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs), including teachers, lecturers, principals and headmasters, who were drafted into special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.Although the main phase of the exercise ended Thursday, they will be relieved of election duties on Oct 27, when the final electoral roll is published, formally bringing the SIR exercise in Karnataka to a close.Officials in the chief electoral officer’s (CEO) office said the additional officers, mostly of Grade B, had been deployed since Aug to handle claims, objections and notices. Their services will no longer be required as the workload is expected to ease during the mop-up drive.The Aug 27 gazette notification states that “the officers cease to function immediately after the completion of SIR in Karnataka”.The officers were drawn from departments including urban development, horticulture, social welfare, fisheries and land records, besides engineering staff from Escoms, PWD, RDPR, water resources and irrigation departments.Education officials were also drafted, with the gazette listing school heads, college lecturers and professors among those appointed.They assisted electoral registration officers (EROs) in disposing of 43 lakh notices, verifying voters’ documents and finalising the rolls.The 336 AEROs and 224 EROs, one for each assembly constituency, will continue during the mop-up drive and subsequent revisions.“While the office of the officer is associated with the ERO rank, individual officers could change, but those occupying that position will assume the additional responsibility,” an official told TOI.Booth-level officers (BLOs) will remain in place for the mop-up drive, supplementary rolls as well as summary revisions.“They are permanently allocated to their booth. Earlier, one BLO was in charge of two booths, now every BLO will have an individual part,” the official said.Karnataka had 59,050 BLOs and polling stations when SIR began. A rationalisation exercise on Aug 17 capped each booth at 1,200 voters and ensured it was within 2km of voters’ homes, taking the number of polling stations to 60,923, with an equal number of BLOs.
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