Mysuru: State BJP General Secretary Preetham Gowda said that the BJP will have to face a major setback in future polls if the party takes lightly on the ongoing SIR (Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls) process being undertaken by the Election Commission of India in the State. 

He was addressing party workers at the party’s Mysuru division special meeting on SIR at a private hotel here yesterday. 

Noting that the names of even the sitting Legislators and the names of Legislator aspirants too will get deleted in the electoral rolls if the SIR process is neglected, Preetham Gowda, also a former Hassan MLA,  stressed on the need for party workers to take the ongoing SIR process seriously. 

Maintaining that SIR will decide the fate of future polls, he called upon party workers to strive for the success of the process.  

“The SIR process will also decide the future course of One Nation, One Election campaign and redrawing of Lok Sabha  and Assembly Constituencies in all States. As such, the local party leadership should form teams of former Gram Panchayat members and Corporators at every Shakti Kendra and Mahashakti Kendra levels and hold regular meetings to ensure the efficiency and total success of SIR. The party leaders should come out of the mindset that polls can be won by caste calculations and voter allurements. The voter turnout will drastically increase if a genuine and error-free electoral rolls is in place after a successful SIR. Higher voter turnout means that the party has a very bright chance of electoral win,” he argued. 

Stating that the SIR, which will be held from June 26 to July 30, is not a traditional exercise of addition of new voters or deletion of ineligible voters, Preetham compared the SIR process to teachers erasing what is already written on the black board and writing new arithmetic or equation. The SIR is a process where the names of all voters in the electoral rolls will be deleted and preparation of an entirely new electoral roll. The voters will find it difficult to cast their votes unless they fill in the enumeration forms issued by the BLOs. Hence party workers at all levels have much responsibility of ensuring that genuine voters in their respective booth levels are not left out of the electoral rolls, he observed. 

MLA T.S. Srivatsa, State BJP Vice-President M. Rajendra, MLC elect Raghu Kautilya, State BJP Minorities Morcha  President Dr. Anil Thomas, City BJP President L. Nagendra, District President Kumbralli Subbanna, former Mayors Sandesh Swamy and  Shivakumar,  former MLAs N. Mahesh, B. Harshavardhan and Niranjan Kumar, leaders Naveen, E.C. Ningaraj Gowda, Thontadarya, K.R. Mallikarjunappa, Lakshmi Ashwin Gowda, N.V. Phaneesh, Kaveesh Gowda and Siddaraju, Hassan District BJP President Siddesh, Mandya District President Indresh and others were present.