After sustained public pressure, with several people reporting that they had received notices at the last minute, leaving them with a narrow window to respond, the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has made the notice list public.

A total of 43.81 lakh people across the State have been marked to receive notices. 

The list can be accessed here: https://ceo.karnataka.gov.in/notices_issued.html 

But, there is a problem: It does not specify the hearing venue, date or time. This leaves voters in the dark about when and where they are expected to appear, adding to the confusion and burden surrounding an already opaque process.

With hearings having begun on Thursday across Karnataka, the situation has left many people with no option but to miss their hearings because of the short notice and lack of prior information. The public can now access the list, with district-wise files uploaded on the website, similar to the ASDDO list.

The major hurdle flagged by electors is that only the person issued the notice can appear for the hearing, and no one else can represent the voter at the hearing venue. Moreover, a hearing can be rescheduled only once, at the discretion of the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO).

Electors have also flagged that Booth Level Officers (BLOs) are not visiting voters’ homes to serve notices, but are instead asking them to collect the notices from the polling station, citing their duties at hearing venues. However, the hearings are to be conducted by the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) or Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), not the BLOs.

Notices have been issued for two broad reasons: non-mapping, where a voter could not map their own or their parent’s details to the 2002 electoral rolls, and anomalies or “logical discrepancies”, such as an implausible age gap between an elector and their parents or grandparents, differences in the spelling of the father’s name, or a mismatch in the voter’s own name in cases of self-mapping.

However, while these are the stated reasons for generating notices, several people in Bengaluru have reported receiving notices despite having filled in all their details correctly.

Even where a voter has correctly provided all the required details and there is no actual logical discrepancy or mapping gap, being wrongly issued a notice does not spare them the inquiry. Recently, in Byatarayanapura, the Bengaluru DEO found that three people had been issued notices despite the mapping details they had provided being correct. Yet, the order still required them to appear for an inquiry. The entire burden continues to fall on the voter, even when the error is not theirs.