Hyderabad: The Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee has set seven demands before the Election Commission of India during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.
TPCC Official Spokesperson Syed Nizamuddin said on Saturday that officials should not delete an elector merely because the person missed a hearing. He also sought greater transparency over notices, discrepancies, Form-6 applications and electoral-roll software.
Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan, Nizamuddin said the scale of exclusions and notices required safeguards before officials prepared the final rolls. He demanded that officials tell every noticed elector the exact discrepancy recorded against the person’s name.
The Congress also sought an Assembly segment-wise break-up of all 11 discrepancy categories. In addition, it demanded daily Form-6 data on the Chief Electoral Officer’s website, covering applications received, accepted, rejected and pending.
The party also sought gender-wise figures for the ASDD list, hearing absentees and restorations. It demanded recognition of the Telangana government’s new family certificate as a supporting document and an independent audit of electoral-roll software.
“Not a single eligible voter should lose the right to vote merely because of a missed hearing, a spelling variation or a procedural problem,” Nizamuddin said.
Nizamuddin said Telangana had 3.38 crore electors when the revision began. The draft roll contained about 2.65 crore names, leaving around 73.39 lakh electors outside it.
Officials issued about 92.87 lakh notices during the exercise. Of these, around 60.50 lakh concerned discrepancies, while 32.36 lakh involved failure to map electors with the 2002 electoral rolls.
Nizamuddin said about 47 lakh noticees had not attended hearings. He added that officials had not served another 7.41 lakh notices.
He said people could miss hearings because of work, migration, address changes or a lack of understanding of the notice. “Missing a hearing cannot be treated as proof that a voter is dead, shifted, duplicate or ineligible,” he said.
The TPCC spokesperson said the revision had covered a wide pool of electors. However, figures available with the party showed that only around 3,400 electors ultimately failed eligibility checks after verification.
Telangana SIR demands focus on data and due process
The TPCC spokesperson questioned the absence of a public break-up of the 11 categories of “logical discrepancies”. He claimed many cases involved spelling or name variations rather than substantive eligibility concerns.
Nizamuddin said officials had received about 4.4 lakh Form-6 applications against 73.39 lakh names excluded from the draft roll. He said the figure represented about 6% of the excluded names.
“This shows that merely giving people a restoration route is not enough,” he said. He demanded daily disclosure of applications received, accepted, rejected and pending.
Nizamuddin said tenants, migrant workers, poor families and women faced major difficulties during the revision. He said the issue was particularly significant in Hyderabad and neighbouring urban districts.
He also questioned the rejection of the State government’s new family certificate during hearings. The Congress demanded recognition of the document as valid supporting evidence.
Nizamuddin referred to recent reports of internal objections within the Election Commission over voter registration procedures and electoral-roll database controls. He sought clarity on whether local Electoral Registration Officers retained full authority over additions and deletions.
He also questioned whether software controls operating from Delhi could restrict such changes. Further, he asked whether Telangana’s Form-6 process contained extra questions linked to the 2002 SIR.
Nizamuddin said Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy would raise Telangana’s concerns at the Congress Working Committee meeting in New Delhi on September 29. “The Chief Minister is not going to Delhi with a political complaint. He is going with the Election Commission’s own figures,” he said.
He said the Chief Minister had turned the State’s experience into a national question concerning voting rights. The Congress would formulate a statewide protest programme after the CWC deliberations, he added.
Nizamuddin warned that the electoral roll could fall to around 2.2 crore if a substantial number of the roughly 47 lakh hearing absentees eventually lost their registration. He demanded that the Election Commission publish its own projection of the final electorate.
He also sought complete figures on additions, deletions, restorations and pending cases before officials freeze the rolls. Nizamuddin said the Congress supported removal of genuine duplicate, deceased and ineligible entries.
However, he said eligible citizens should not lose existing registration because of a software flag, an unserved notice or failure to attend a hearing.
