Telangana: Gaps Alleged In Voter List Revision Exercise
“Despite the CEO’s clear directions to BLOs and EROs, we have still not received the anomaly and unmapped lists": Congress president Syed Khalid Saifullah
HYDERABAD: Hyderabad district Congress president Syed Khalid Saifullah on Friday alleged serious gaps in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) 2026 exercise. He said one of the major problems concerned the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD) voter lists supplied for verification, which did not contain house numbers or adequate address particulars.
“How does the Election Commission expect BLAs to visit households when the ASDD list itself does not contain house numbers? Without proper addresses, how are BLAs supposed to locate these voters and verify their status,” Saifullah asked. He said the anomaly and unmapped voter lists had also not been provided to political parties, despite the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) having directed all booth level officers (BLOs) and electoral registration officers (EROs) to share these lists with political parties.
“Despite the CEO’s clear directions to BLOs and EROs, we have still not received the anomaly and unmapped lists. If we do not know which voters have been flagged, how can our BLAs reach them, explain the problem, guide them about the required documents and help genuine voters resolve their anomalies or get correctly mapped,” Safiullah asked.
Citing the example of Yakutpura Assembly constituency, he said the Hyderabad DCC had compiled 148 sets of apparent duplicate voter entries that required verification by the election authorities. “If such apparent duplicate entries continue to remain even after SIR, serious questions arise about the effectiveness and quality of the exercise. Every such case must be properly verified and corrected, but no genuine voter should be deleted merely on the basis of suspicion or a database match,” he said.
Safiullah demanded that the Election Commission immediately provide political parties with complete anomaly and unmapped voter lists, furnish house numbers and sufficient address particulars in the ASD lists, and undertake thorough verification of apparent duplicate entries detected even after the SIR exercise. Booth level agents (BLAs) said that if discrepancies are brought to their notice, they will fact‑check them. Pertaining to the ASD list and list of anomalies, they said these lists are handed over to the representatives of political parties.