The Election Commission of India ( ECI ) on Friday limited to 10 the number of Form 7 applications — the document submitted to object against the inclusion of a person in the voter roll — an individual 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 rolls, the cap is five per month. In an instruction to the chief electoral officer s of all states and UTs, the poll body said an individual elector can file at most 10 such 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 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.
