Odisha | A matter of SIRVival

It looks like an encore of bengal as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), like a spreading cyclone, makes landfall in neighbouring Odisha—wreaking pretty much the same effect. Nearly 980,000 names stand erased in the first layer of clean-up—a sieve accounting for deaths, relocation and the like. An annual exercise in non-SIR times, officials say this layer typically sees a much slimmer deletion rate. This year’s figure, arrived at after a contentious field mapping across January-March, has raised alarm bells within the Opposition—especially since the ‘special intensive’ part is yet to come.