The Election Commission of India (ECI) has revealed that 7.3 million names were not included in the draft electoral rolls for Telangana, published on Monday. This omission is part of the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) exercise aimed at updating the electoral lists in the state.
“These voters were found to be no longer residing at the addresses mentioned in the present electoral rolls. Another 9.2 million electors will be issued notices over anomalies or failure to establish a link with the 2002 rolls during the ongoing SIR, Telangana chief electoral officer (CEO) C Sudharshan Reddy said. He said that about 7.3 million names were in the absent, shifted, dead or duplicate list. Genuine electors can still have their names included in the electoral rolls during the claims and objections period from August 17 to September 16 by submitting Form 6 along with the prescribed declaration form, the CEO said. The SIR exercise revealed that 45,18,961 voters, or 16.99% of the total, had permanently shifted residence and were categorised as migrants, according to the CEO. Apart from migrated voters, booth-level officers (BLOs) identified 922,230 voters who had died; 1,125,546 who were not available at the given addresses or had otherwise become untraceable; and 670,203 who had already enrolled elsewhere. Another 102,294 voters had not submitted their enumeration forms, the CEO said. Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri district topped the state with 94.31% of enumeration forms collected and digitised, while Hyderabad recorded the lowest progress at 58.89%, according to official data uploaded on the Telangana CEO website.
“The enumeration forms of 7,339,234 electors, accounting for 21.70%, could not be collected and uploaded,” Reddy said, adding the revision was aimed at maximising elector participation, not at indiscriminately deleting names from the rolls. In several cases, field-level verification indicated that voters had moved permanently to other locations,” Reddy said.
