Former Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Arun Prakash, and his wife received notices from the Election Commission of India (ECI) asking them to submit additional documents to establish them as registered electors during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Goa.
The Admiral, a decorated war veteran and a Vir Chakra awardee, who settled in Goa after retirement, has been marked under the “unmapped” category.
“My wife and I have been asked to appear before ECI officials on two separate dates, and we shall comply with their request. The language of the notice is quite complicated and difficult to understand,” Adm Prakash told The Indian Express.
The notice served earlier this week said, “Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Electoral Roll is ongoing in your Assembly Constituency. Your duly signed enumeration form has been received. After scrutiny, it has been observed that you have not filled in the details related to you or your relative that could establish you or your relative as a registered elector in the electoral rolls prepared during the previous SIR.”
In a post on X on Sunday, the Admiral said, “I neither need nor have ever asked for any special privileges since retirement 20 years ago. My wife and I had filled the SIR forms as required and were pleased to see our names figured in the Goa Draft Electoral Roll 2026 on the EC website. We will, however, comply with EC notices.”
He said a booth-level officer (BLO) visited them thrice and could have sought additional information, pointing out that SIR forms should be revised if they are not “evoking” required information. “May I point out to @ECIVEEP that (a) if the SIR forms are not evoking required info, they should be revised; (b) the BLO visited us 3 times and could have asked for additional info; (c) we are an 82/78-year-old couple and have been asked to appear on two different dates, 18 km away,” he said in the post.
A government official, requesting anonymity, said the notice was served since “no record was found [of them] in the 2002 electoral rolls, when the last SIR exercise was held in Goa. In the enumeration form, some details had not been filled, and notice was hence issued.”
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Sanjay Goel, Goa’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), did not respond to requests for a comment.
Earlier last week, South Goa MP Viriato Fernandes, a retired naval officer and Kargil war veteran, received a notice from the Election Commission of India (ECI) asking him to submit his documents to prove his “identity in order to retain my name in the electoral roll”.
Over 1 lakh names were deleted from the draft electoral rolls in Goa, marking a deletion of 8.44%. According to data shared by the Goa Chief Electoral Officer last month, out of 11,85,034 electors, 10,84,992 (91.56%) submitted their enumeration forms. As per the data, of the 1,00,042 electors deleted from draft electoral rolls, 25,574 are dead; 29,729 are untraceable or absent; 40,469 have permanently moved; 1,997 are already enrolled at multiple places in the electoral roll; and 2,273 are listed as others, who are not willing to register as an elector for some reason.
