The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday set a ceiling on the number of Form 7 applications a single elector can file, saying bulk objections on “unsubstantiated grounds” were inconveniencing voters and overloading field staff.
Similar bulk applications were reported in the Bahadurpura and Goshamahal constituencies, with pre-filled forms that left the applicant details blank. During continuous updation of electoral rolls, the cap is five per month. In an instruction to the chief electoral officers of all states and Union territories (UTs), the poll body said an individual elector can file at most 10 Form 7 applications during the entire claims-and-objections period. In Telangana, the Congress first raised the issue in Hyderabad’s Musheerabad on October 1, alleging that a BJP booth-level agent had filed more than 30 Form 7 applications seeking the deletion of members of a single Muslim family.
The limits apply to both online and offline filings, it said. The Commission said that while online filings were capped at six at a time, “the number of physical forms presented in bulk has not been defined and has been left to the judgement of the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), which is creating challenges for the field functionaries.
