Telangana SIR: A vote lost in revision

Telangana's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls has been marred by systemic flaws, poor coordination, technical glitches and alleged political inteference, leaving lakhs of voters deleted, wrongly classified as deceased or asked to establish their eligibility afresh. Syed Mohammed and Swathi Vadlamudi examine how a process meant to clean up the rolls has left voters struggling to reclaim their electoral identity

The news hit Jaseemunnisa Begum, an elector from Musheerabad Assembly constituency in Hyderabad, like a bolt of lightning: her husband was dead. Except, he was not. What had been declared dead was his electoral identity, and the consequences were only beginning to unfold.

A volunteer helping those excluded from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) lists had called to say that her husband, Abdul Kareem Malik, in his late 40s, had been marked deceased in the electoral rolls.

"I actually thought my husband had suddenly died. I cannot understand why they did this. We have voted in the past elections. Now my husband has no choice but to fill Form-6, which is meant for new voters," she says.

Hers is not an isolated case. Anxiety gripped Hyderabad households as the SIR exercise began with the distribution of enumeration forms. Booth Level Officers (BLOs), tasked with distributing and collecting the forms, became sought-after figures, often drawing voters' ire.

The release of the draft rolls, with names missing, fuelled anger and frustration. Notices citing alleged discrepancies in electoral records deepened the confusion, while Form 7 applications seeking deletions, allegedly along political lines, triggered fresh outrage as the claims and objections phase ended on October 7.

There were reports of a few electors being marked "deceased" despite being alive and going about their daily lives. Their names figured on the Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate (ASDD) list.

Problems from the outset

Telangana's SIR, which officially began on June 15 this year, was beset by problems from the outset. The pre-enumeration phase lasted 10 days and included training for BLOs, Electoral Registration Officers and District Election Officers.

A total of 3,38,26,446 enumeration forms were printed in duplicate for electors on the 2025 rolls, published after the Special Summary Revision. BLOs were instructed to distribute and collect the forms door to door, making at least three visits and helping electors fill them in.

Yet, many BLOs and their assistants, especially in urban areas, did not visit households even on the first day. Unfamiliar with electoral work and drawn from departments with little public contact, they set up camps in community halls and Resident Welfare Association (RWA) buildings, where voters had to go and collect the forms.

"It would have been impossible for us to cover so many houses, each twice or thrice, in such a short span. We depended on RWAs to pass on the information, and political party agents to enrol as many voters as possible," says a BLO.

While some BLOs called up electors whose mobile numbers were available, most relied on social media groups to publicise camp locations.

"I had to visit three locations before I found my form. I got my BLO's contact from the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO)'s website and tried calling her, but she did not answer. When I finally found the camp, the BLO there was different from the one listed on the website," says K.Raghavendra, an elector from L.B. Nagar constituency.

Inadequate communication from the Election Commission of India (ECI) also left some, who had moved permanently but not shifted their vote, returning to their old polling stations to collect the forms.

"I had no idea I could file Form 6 after the enumeration phase. There were no clear directions. We had to travel 40 kilometres back and forth to the previous polling station to collect the form, submit it and then make a third trip to furnish documentary proof," says A.R.K. Anand Kumar, a voter from Vanasthalipuram.

Naresh K., another elector from Musheerabad, says his uncle collected the enumeration form but could not submit it as the BLO remained elusive. "I must have called him at least 10 times. Each time I got an evasive response," he shares. Unable to submit the form, he eventually found his name deleted from the rolls.

Finding their details in the 2002 SIR proved another hurdle. Many voters, including the educated, misunderstood the form and entered their current details in the section meant for 2002. BLOs offered little help, while misspelt names and language barriers made the search difficult. Voters who had moved between States also struggled to locate their records.

"I shifted to Hyderabad from Meerut after marriage. I could neither find my details in the 2002 rolls nor could I make sense of the rolls which were in Hindi," says Sangeetha*.

A State-wide pre-SIR mapping exercise intended to facilitate enumeration proved largely futile, as its data was not carried over to the actual exercise, leaving voters to find their names in the old rolls themselves. "We overworked ourselves. We harassed the BLOs every day, thinking the pre-SIR work would ease things for us during the actual SIR. But none of the mapping data was carried over to the enumeration phase, for reasons best known to the higher authorities," says a senior government official.

Curious case of missing names

At the end of enumeration, the CEO's office reported 73,39,235 voters in the ASDD category. Of those, 9,22,229 were classified as deceased, reportedly based on death certificates or declarations by family members. The ERONET app used artificial intelligence to flag demographic and photographic similarities between entries. However, verification of 'absent' and 'shifted' voters was left largely to BLOs, many of whom had failed to do the job.

An analysis of ECI data by the Sabar Institute and Constitutional Guardians Forum (CGF) found that 53.97 lakh names appeared on the ASDD list across 104 of Telangana's 119 Assembly constituencies -- roughly one in four electors.

Meanwhile, Hyderabad district, comprising 15 constituencies, accounted for 19,41,444 names. Women constituted 47.8% of deletions in the district, with Bahadurpura, Chandrayangutta, Karwan, Yakutpura, Malakpet and Nampally recording the highest proportions of women among deleted electors.

Sabir Ahamed, lead researcher at the Sabar Institute, says ASDD deletions were unusually high, exceeding 1,000 voters at some polling booths against a State-wide average of about 500 per booth. "Those who voted in the last elections have also been deleted. A larger number of non-dead voters have been deleted as compared to about 8.2% removals which are recorded as dead," Ahamed adds.

The report also found differences in the reasons recorded for deletions among Muslim-classified electors -- identified through an analysis of names -- and non-Muslims. Among Muslim electors listed for deletion, 19.8% were marked 'Untraceable/Absent', against 16% of non-Muslims. Another 7.6% were marked as enrolled elsewhere, compared with 3.4% of non-Muslims. The disparities varied across constituencies, particularly in cases classified as 'Untraceable/Absent'.

Officials who defended the exercise cite the House-listing Survey for Census 2027 in Hyderabad district. They said the number of electors on the 2025 rolls matched the district's population as against the average elector-population ratio for India which is in the range of 67-73%.

"We have given ample time for voters to collect enrolment forms through multiple deadline extensions before releasing the ASDD list. Those deleted had the opportunity to enrol themselves during the claims and objections phase," a senior official from the CEO's office says.

Roll call of errors

In Hyderabad district, only 27.95 lakh of the 47.36 lakh electors (59%) made it to the draft rolls after the enumeration phase. Nearly three lakh were classified as 'Untraceable' and 13.45 lakh as 'Permanently Shifted'. Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri together accounted for close to 60% of ASDD-listed voters statewide, highlighting the concentration of deletions in the capital region.

ASDD-listed electors formed the largest chunk of deletions in Telangana's SIR exercise, raising questions about a process that placed the onus of re-enrolment on voters.

"This is not the proper process for SIR. It shifts the burden of enrolment completely onto the elector. Intensive revisions should be done through de-novo preparation of rolls, and not by tweaking the existing rolls," says an official involved in the preparation of fresh electoral rolls and issuance of Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPICs) in 2008.

Despite having been enrolled and voted previously, deleted electors were asked to fill Form-6, meant for new voters. Mohammed Jani Miya, enrolled at booth 218 in Yakutpura, had submitted his enumeration form before the deadline. But when his BLO scanned it, a technical glitch displayed the details of another elector from Khairatabad, at least 12 kilometres away.

"They later asked for my documents such as Aadhaar, proof of birth, and whatnot, to resolve the problem. I furnished everything but there is no solution apparently. I have been asked to fill Form-6," he says.

Form-6 applications during the claims and objections phase numbered fewer than six lakh, against the 73 lakh electors deleted before publication of draft rolls. Since enumeration forms were issued only to those on the 2025 rolls, the actual number of eligible voters left out of the process remains unknown.

The claims and objections phase also saw 24,323 Form-7 applications seeking deletions. Pre-filled applications seeking the removal of a large number of Muslim voters were found in Musheerabad, Bahadurpura and Goshamahal, being circulated by Booth Level Agents allegedly belonging to the BJP.

According to CEO C.Sudharsan Reddy, deletions will not be made unless the claims are supported by documents or verified by BLOs.

Notices, questionable discrepancies

The notice period continued beyond the October 7 deadline for claims and objections, with more than 92 lakh electors classified as unmapped or having 'logical discrepancies' asked to prove their citizenship using one of 12 specified documents. Many notices cited errors that voters said did not apply to them, including cases where electors who had mapped their details against the 2002 rolls were classified as unmapped. Officials simply blamed it on the automated software."The notices are auto-generated by the system after we feed the information," an official says.

Saud Ahmed*, an elector from Khairatabad, received a notice claiming that the age gap between him and his grandfather was less than 40 years. His grandfather was born in 1939 and he in 1999, a gap of 60 years. "It is funny that they did not get the math right! I am the youngest among four siblings. The age difference between my father and me is over 40 years," he says.

The Sabar-CGF report found that Muslims accounted for 15.5% of cases in the grandparent-age anomaly category, while those with six or more siblings constituted 50.5% of cases. Ahamed argues that such notices failed to account for demographic changes, including declining fertility rates among Muslims as per government data. "So, these notices were sent to those who are much older," he says.

Polling station 91 in Kukatpally received the highest number of notices at 1,061, followed by station 235 in the same constituency, with 1,057. At polling station 103 in Karwan, 601 of 678 notices (88.6%) went to electors identified by Muslim names. At station 33 in Charminar, they accounted for 98.3% of notices.

Academic and activist Padmaja Shaw, who received an unmapped notice despite entering her 2002 details on the enumeration form, calls the process "a mockery of democracy". She mentions the first preparation of electoral rolls in 1949, when officials travelled on horses and mules to seek out eligible voters, including people displaced during Partition.

"A large number of people moved between refugee camps that were spread up to Hyderabad. It was an extraordinarily beautiful exercise and a real commitment to democracy," she says even as she questions why voters deleted without proper verification or consent should have to seek fresh enrolment. She also calls for the rolls to be restored to their 2025 version and the revision restarted with proper systems in place.