Major political parties like the Shiv Sena, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP were not present at a preparatory meeting for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) held at the Pune District Collectorate on Thursday. The SIR is set to commence in Maharashtra this month and the meeting was held by District Collector and election officer Jitendra Dudi. City presidents of all three parties told The Indian Express that they were unaware of the meeting being held. All parties had been sent invitations for the meeting, a senior election official confirmed.

Representatives from the BJP, NCP (Sharad Pawar), NPP and ISLAM party were present at the meeting, according to a press note by the District Information Office. Congress’ Rahul Sharma, heading the party’s SIR team in the district, told The Indian Express that he reached the meeting late due to heavy rains in Pune.

A senior election officer told The Indian Express, “SIR meetings have been held twice or thrice now. Other than BJP nobody (from major parties) turns up. Five BJP members and one NCP (SP) representative attended today. We are telling the parties time and again to attend the meetings, appoint your BLOs, and be ready for the process. But they don’t even turn up for the meetings. If they have some doubts or some voters are being deleted without reason, then they should prepare now.”

In response, Arvind Shinde, Pune city president of the Congress, said, “We are meeting with Kalaskar ma’am (Deputy District Election Officer) everyday and we have selected 24 representatives for the SIR. We have asked for BLO lists and this weekend our machinery is ready for the mapping process that is going to take place. Sitting in the meeting was not the important thing, we are meeting them everyday. They are repeating what we have been told before. And today due to the rain we couldn’t attend it.”

The Maharashtra Congress has previously demanded that the SIR be conducted over the next few years as there were no elections due.

City presidents of other parties said they were not aware of the meeting. NCP city president Sunil Tingre, Shiv Sena city president Pramod Bhangire, and Shiv Sena (UBT) city head Gajanan Tharkude all told The Indian Express that they were unaware of the meeting.