The Election Commission of India has introduced a new “Mark VIP” feature in the app used by booth level officers, in the middle of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision exercise being carried out across 16 states and three Union territories.
Officials at Delhi’s chief electoral officer’s office confirmed that the BLO App was updated with the new feature on July 30. Records from the Apple App Store logged the update on July 31 with the descriptor “mark VIP elector related changes,” though no corresponding record was found on the Android Play Store. At the time of the update, the SIR exercise was in its enumeration phase in Delhi and four other states, and in the claims and objections phase in ten others, including Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
Booth level officers in Delhi and Haryana confirmed the module was live on their apps, while officers in West Bengal said the feature was not present when the SIR process began in the state in November 2025 and was introduced more than a month ago. The feature allows a BLO to mark an elector as VIP after visiting their residence, with the marking subsequently vetted by higher electoral officials.
The development comes amid controversy over VIP voters in Delhi, after several prominent individuals, including Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and Election Commissioner S.S. Sandhu, were sent logical discrepancy notices. Officials noted that the provision to mark certain voters as VIP has existed in Election Commission rules since 2018, and that VIP status does not exempt individuals from receiving such notices, since VIP voters can be automatically added to the draft roll but remain subject to claims and objections.
According to officials, the feature functions as a consolidation exercise to help facilitate VIP voters during the enumeration process, ensuring their forms are processed without difficulty, even though they remain subject to standard scrutiny. The Election Commission’s March 2023 Manual on Electoral Rolls provides for flagging such “marked electors,” a category that includes MPs, MLAs, MLCs, holders of declared offices, and prominent individuals from fields such as arts, culture, journalism, sports and the judiciary.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
