Himalaya Harbinger, Rudrapur Burea
The office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) in Maharashtra has sent a proposal to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to amend Form 6 so that voters deleted during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) can apply to get back on the electoral roll without declaring that they are enrolling “for the first time”, a declaration that carries criminal penalties if false.
The proposal, sent to the ECI last week, flags an issue being faced by election officials on the ground with the Commission’s own course correction. On September 29, the ECI ordered a “special drive” across the 20 States and union Territories where the SIR is complete to enrol voters “left out” of the rolls, directing them to use Form 6, the form prescribed for new voters. In states such as Delhi and Maharashtra, where the SIR is still underway, Form 6 is also being used to bring back voters whose names may have been deleted from the draft rolls.
The Indian Express sent questions to the ECI on the Maharashtra proposal, whether it would be forwarded to the Law Ministry for an amendment to the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. A response is awaited.
Form 6 is titled “application form for new voters”. Its declaration states: “I am applying for inclusion in Electoral Roll for the first time and my name is not included in any Assembly Constituency/ Parliamentary Constituency.” A false declaration, the form states, is punishable under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, with imprisonment of up to one year, a fine, or both.
Election officials on the ground across states have been reporting difficulties in persuading voters to use Form 6 to get back on the electoral roll. Voters whose names were deleted during the SIR but who were previously registered electors are under the impression that using Form 6 to re-enrol could invite legal action, since the form requires them to declare that they are applying for inclusion in the electoral roll for the first time. This has created a practical hurdle for poll officials, particularly Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), who are trying to get these voters back on the rolls.
The Maharashtra proposal seeks to remove the words “new voters” from the form’s title, and introduce an alternative declaration for applicants who were previously enrolled in a named Assembly constituency but are no longer registered anywhere and are applying for inclusion again. It also proposes allowing applicants to provide their earlier Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number to help officials trace their previous entry.
Any change to the statutory Form 6 requires the Central government to amend the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
That was the point Election Commissioner Vivek Joshi made in a note dated May 16, first reported by The Indian Express in its investigation on September 23. Objecting to a separate question added to the online Form 6 in July, Joshi wrote that the form “cannot be altered without making amendments in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960”. Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu concurred. On August 13, Sandhu described the change as “unauthorised/ illegal”.
The additional question, that Sandhu and Joshi had objected to, asked first-time voters filling Form 6 online whether they, or their parents or grandparents, had been on the electoral roll during the last SIR. Applicants could not proceed online without answering it. The ECI has since said the declaration would apply only during the “SIR phase” and the original Form 6 has been restored online for 20 States where the SIR is complete.
That change is also under challenge before the Supreme Court. On October 5, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant remarked orally that the court had not approved any “modified” version of Form 6, and would examine ECI records to establish whether a change had been made and by whom. On October 12, a three-judge bench said it had neither approved nor disapproved the modified form. “We will examine it,” Justice Joymalya Bagchi said.
On October 14, hearing an application on the confusion over Form 6 being used for re-inclusion of names in the Capital, the Supreme Court said it is “thinking of passing an order that will take care of it”. The court advanced the hearing in the Delhi SIR matter from October 30 to October 28.
The Maharashtra proposal is the latest request from within the election machinery to fix the process for restoring voters to the rolls. On September 24, as The Indian Express first reported on September 29, Maharashtra CEO S Chockalingam had asked the Commission for five changes to ECINet to let EROs exercise discretion the law already gives them, over hearings, documents and discrepancies. The Commission conceded to four of the demands within days.
As The Indian Express reported in its investigation on September 24, 97 voters struck off Goa’s draft roll produced documents under a Supreme Court-ordered hearing and were found eligible by the state’s own EROs, but ECINet had no option to reverse a deletion, and eight requests to the Commission to do so went unanswered before the final roll was published without them. Goa’s Chief Electoral Officer, Sanjay Goel, had told The Indian Express: “The call (to not include) was theirs. But there has to be some mechanism (in ECINET) to re-include voters either at the ERO level.” Those 97 were then told to apply afresh on Form 6.
