Daltonganj: Many electors served notices under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls are reaching verification camps with original bank passbooks and PAN cards, only to learn that most of the documents do not meet Election Commission’s requirement of establishing their presence in India before July 1, 1987.At the SIR camp at Brahmin High School near Sahitya Samaj Chowk, several electors arrived with recently updated bank passbooks and PAN cards after being apparently advised by booth level officers (BLOs) to bring them for verification. “The BLO came to our house and asked us to bring our bank passbook and PAN card. So we did,” said a woman elector at the camp.Under EC guidelines, bank and post office passbooks, as well as LIC policy documents, are valid only if they were issued before the July 1, 1987, cut-off date.Sushila Devi, another elector, said the requirement was difficult to meet. “Where will I find a passbook that is over 39 years old? It must have been discarded long ago during house cleaning,” she said.Rashmi Ranjan, additional assistant electoral registration officer at the camp, said BLOs were correctly advising electors to produce bank or post office passbooks if they had been issued before the cut-off date.Kundan Kumar, ERO of Bishrampur assembly constituency, said LIC policy documents issued before July 1, 1987, were equally valid. “Any document issued by a govt undertaking before the cut-off date could also be considered during verification,” he said.Electors, however, pointed to the practical difficulties of producing such records. “Before 1987, banks and post offices maintained records manually and passbooks were handwritten. Hardly any family preserves old documents,” said an elector.SBI field officer Santoshi Dutta said modern passbooks generally show the date of issue, not the original date on which an account was opened. “Customers seeking to establish that an account existed before 1987 would have to apply separately to the bank for official records,” she said.Postal superintendent SK Sangam said records predating July 1987 would have to be traced through old ledgers, as postal accounts were migrated from manual to digital systems in 2014.
