Telangana SIR: Form-6 rejection and form-7 deletion unusually high during pre-SIR period

There is a high probability that after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Telangana electoral rolls, a large number of genuine voters will remain among the final rolls. It consists not only of voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls and voters struck out at the stage of claims and objections, but also of applicants whose Form 6 was rejected.

The number of rejections is almost 27% of the total number of Form 6 applications processed during the Pre-SIR and SIR stages, which is a very high number.

A total of 10,77,450 Form 6 applications were received from 119 constituencies across Telangana, of which 5,20,331 were received during the six-month pre-SIR phase between January 1, 2026 and June 14, 2026. During the enumeration phase and before the draft was released, between August 26 and August 2, 2026 2026, a total of 3,18,042 new voter registration applications were received.

The number of Form 6 applications received during the claims and objections phase when the Election Commission of India (ECI) published and invited new and deleted voters to register was only 1,70,374. After the claims and objections period that ended on 7 October 2026, a total of 68,703 Form 6 applications were received till 28 October 2026.

Of all these applications, a total of 2,43,643 were rejected, according to information provided by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). This is close to 23%, calculated from the total number of applications received. With a total of 1,61,214 applications still awaiting verification, the rejection rate rises to 27%, which is unusual.

Most of these rejections were made during the pre-SIR phase. Of the 5,20,331 applications received during this phase, a total of 1,92,574 were rejected, representing a rejection rate of 37%.

Together with the total deletions made during the pre-SIR and SIR phases, exclusions from the electoral roll could exceed 80 million.

The number of voters excluded during the enumeration phase accounts for the largest portion of the total number of excluded voters at 73,39,235. Over 4.54 lakh voters were deleted by filling Form 7 even before the SIR exercise began. Official records show that during the six-month period between January 1, 2026 and June 14, 2026, a total of 5,13,375 requests were made to delete names from the list or object to the inclusion of names. Of these, 4,54,340 were accepted.

While officials say these were demographically similar records and photo-like records sifted through by the ECINET software application, no explanation was provided for the 47,303 Form 7 applications that were rejected during the same period.

A total of 5,81,273 Form 7 applications have been filed since 1 January 2026, of which 5,08,057 have been accepted. These include voters who were found ineligible for the final roll during the notice period. Only 54,681 Form 7 applications have been rejected and 18,535 are in process.

Of the 50,502 voters found ineligible for final assessment, 19,535 were rejected citing logical inconsistencies and 30,207 because they did not map using the 2002 SIR. A total of 2,58,04,484 voters were parked as of final publication, including 89,63,065 voters who were served notices. The number of voters who are still awaiting hearings or have yet to receive notices exceeds one million.

Published – 29 Oct 2026 09:20 IST