Why in the News
A revision meant to correct Telangana’s electoral rolls has put about 73 lakh voters on its deletion list, but fewer than six lakh have applied to re-enrol. The State’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has closed its window for contesting the draft roll with living voters marked dead and notices citing errors that did not apply.
What is the SIR, and how was it run in Telangana?
- What it is: The SIR is a fresh check of every roll entry, like a door to door census of voters. Booth Level Officers (BLOs), local officials who verify voters, collect an enumeration form confirming each elector’s details.
- The ASDD list: Electors not found or not returning a form go on the Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate (ASDD) list and are left out of the draft roll.
- Planned design: Begun on June 15, the exercise required at least three BLO house visits per elector.
- What went wrong: Many BLOs, drawn from departments with little public contact, held camps in community halls instead:
- data from a pre-SIR mapping exercise, linking current voters to the earlier roll, was never carried over;
- voters struggled to find themselves in the 2002 rolls, with misspelt names and pages in Hindi.
- The takeaway: A door to door exercise became one where voters chased officials, so the burden of enrolment fell on them.
Whose names were removed?
- Declared dead: About 9.22 lakh ASDD voters were marked dead on death certificates or family declarations, some of them alive.
- AI flagging: The ERONET app, the roll management software, used artificial intelligence (AI) to flag entries with similar demographic details or photographs. Checking absent and shifted voters was left to BLOs.
- Independent count: An analysis of Election Commission of India (ECI) data by the Sabar Institute and the Constitutional Guardians Forum (CGF) found 53.97 lakh ASDD names, roughly one in four electors.
- Hyderabad: Only 59% of Hyderabad district’s electors reached the draft rolls; women were 47.8% of deletions.
- Religious skew: Electors the analysis classified as Muslim by name were more often deleted on two grounds:
- ‘Untraceable/Absent’: 19.8% against 16% of non-Muslims;
- ‘enrolled elsewhere’: 7.6% against 3.4%.
Why are deleted voters struggling to return?
- New voter form for old voters: Deleted electors who had voted before were told to fill Form 6, the application meant for new voters.
- Unknown exclusions: Forms went only to those on the 2025 rolls, so eligible voters missing from them were never counted.
- Citizenship notices: More than 92 lakh electors marked unmapped or with ‘logical discrepancies’ were asked to prove citizenship with one of 12 documents. Officials blamed automated software.
- Faulty notices: Many notices cited errors that did not apply. Eg. An elector was flagged for a grandparent age gap below 40 years, but the real gap was 60.
- Bulk deletion requests: The phase saw 24,323 Form 7 objections to names, including pre-filled forms against Muslim voters allegedly circulated by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) agents.
How do officials defend the exercise, and what do critics want?
- Population match: Officials cite the House-listing Survey for Census 2027. It found Hyderabad’s electors equal to its entire population, so the old roll was inflated.
- Time and assurance: The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO)‘s office cites extended deadlines and the option to re-enrol. It says no deletion stands without documents or BLO verification.
- Fresh rolls, not edits: An official from the 2008 roll preparation says intensive revisions must build rolls de novo (from scratch), not tweak old ones.
Challenges
- Unchecked automation: Software generated flags and notices went out without a human check.
- Notices past the deadline: Notices kept going out after the October 7 claims deadline, leaving little time to respond.
- Concentration in the capital: Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri held close to 60% of ASDD voters statewide.
Way Forward
- Restore on verification: Reinstate wrongly deleted names after checks, without a fresh Form 6.
- Logged house visits: Require BLOs to record three geo-tagged visits before marking anyone absent or shifted.
- Human check on flags: Require an Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) to verify every AI flag and system notice before it issues.
Conclusion
Telangana’s revision removed names far faster than it let wrongly deleted voters return. How many ASDD names return to the final roll is what to watch.
Key numbers
- Sabar-CGF analysis coverage: 104 of 119 Assembly constituencies.
- Grandparent age anomaly notices: Muslims 15.5% of cases; electors with six or more siblings 50.5%.
- Elector to population ratio, India: normally 67 to 73%.
Matching Previous Year Question
“[2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”
