Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday closed a Public Interest Litigation seeking an extension of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, holding that the Election Commission is best placed to deal with issues arising during the revision process and that similar questions are already pending before the Supreme Court.

The PIL was filed by noted writer Devanur Mahadeva, historian Ramachandra Guha, retired Major General S.G. Vombatkere and writer Sabiha Bhoomigowda. Their counsel, senior advocate Vikram Huilgol, contended that deficiencies in the implementation of the revision exercise, including inadequate training of Booth Level Officers and ineffective voter facilitation centres, could result in nearly 70 lakh eligible voters being excluded from the electoral rolls.

Representing the Election Commission, advocate Sharath Dodwad assured the court that the Commission would review the situation and extend the revision period if necessary. He further clarified that citizens left out of the draft rolls would still have an opportunity to submit claims for inclusion after the draft list is published.

The Karnataka government, through Advocate General Shashikiran Shetty, informed the bench that it had also requested the Election Commission to safeguard the voting rights of eligible citizens during the revision exercise.

Accepting these submissions, the High Court said there was no need for judicial intervention at present, particularly when the Election Commission had mechanisms to resolve grievances and related issues were already being examined by the Supreme Court.

Election officials also shared the latest progress of the revision exercise. They said 59,050 Booth Level Officers have distributed forms across the state since June 29 as part of the door-to-door survey. While the distribution has been completed, digitisation remains incomplete, with only 69.51 per cent of the filled forms uploaded to the official application.

The delay has been attributed to technical challenges in integrating data from the 2002 Special Intensive Revision, especially while tracing self-mapping and progeny-mapping records.

Officials said 3.85 crore forms have been received so far. Of these, 1.56 crore voters have completed self-mapping and 1.93 crore have completed progeny mapping. Another 17.19 lakh applicants, representing 3.1 per cent of the total submissions, have not provided mapping details. They will be issued notices after the draft electoral rolls are released and will be allowed to submit supporting documents before the final electoral rolls are published.