Telangana Congress to protest ECI’s treatment of SIR on 28 September

Telangana Congress leaders and workers protested from the Ambedkar statue at Tank Bund to the Election Commission office in Hyderabad on Thursday (September 24) in Hyderabad against alleged abuse of power by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. | Photo credit: RAMAKRISHNA G

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud said the Congress will hold protests in all district headquarters across the state on Monday (September 28) against what he described as mishandling by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the Special Intensive Review (SIR) exercise.

Mr Goud demanded that the ECI publicly clarify the objections allegedly raised by the two election commissioners on various aspects of the SIR voter rolls. According to him, the functioning of the Commission should be transparent and accountable.

Referring to reports that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections on 14 occasions in the last 10 months on issues related to electoral roll revision, he said the objections were related to registration of new voters, deletion of names, maintenance of voter database and voter list software and these issues were faced by thousands of people in Telangana.

The TPCC president said the reported objections to the proposed changes in Form 6, used by citizens applying for voter registration, required a detailed explanation from the ECI. He wanted the Commission to clarify the legal basis for the changes and explain the procedure for implementing them.

He also sought details on the role and responsibilities of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) in making changes to voter details. “Who changed the data, when, for what reason and with whose consent” should be detectable using an audit trail, he said.

The TPCC chief also demanded that the ECI disclose the details of names deleted from the draft electoral rolls during the SIR process in terms of state and constituencies, the reasons for such deletions, the number of objections received and the number of names subsequently restored.

He said the Congress had raised concerns about the functioning of the ECI and alleged that the reported objections of two election commissioners had strengthened the party’s apprehensions.

Published – 25 Sep 2026 12:07 IST