Mistakes That Crept into Draft Roll Irk Voters
May have to apply for Form 8 before final Electoral roll is published
Hyderabad:As the Election Commission gears up for issuing notices to voters for anomalies, many voters claim that information about them was incorrectly entered in the draft rolls, though the details were correctly recorded in the pre-SIR revision in 2025 and the special intensive revision of electoral roll of 2002.
Out of 2,64,87,213 voters who had submitted their Enumeration Forms by August 10, 60,50,918 voters had anomalies and 32,36,659 voters were in the unmapped category. This will result in nearly 93 lakh voters getting notices from election officers. The voters blamed booth level officers (BLOs) for uploading incorrect details, and are worried that they will have to submit Form 8 to seek corrections for no fault of theirs.
“During the Enumeration Phase, the voters were careful enough to provide details, particularly in the names and relationship columns, as well as details of pre-SIR mapping. However, the BLOs, under pressure to complete the task at the earliest, might have made mistakes during manual entry, which have crept into the draft list,” M.A. Mujeeb Ayyub, a SIR volunteer and founder of ADALAH – Access to Justice Network.
“In a few cases, the name of a voter’s grandfather has appeared in place of his or her father’s name in the latest draft roll. Details that were correct in 2025 were mixed up, and people were forced to submit Form 8 to make corrections,” he observed.
The voters are also worried over the notices, which they are expected to receive. “My family members felt that the SIR process had been completed, as the BLOs had visited and collected the forms. They were not ready to accept the fact that they could receive notices. But given the massive number of anomalies, there is a possibility that one in three voters will receive notices,” said P. Rajneesh Kumar, a resident of Banjara Hills.
Some people continued to struggle to find their names in the draft voter list, as not only had their booths changed but their names had also appeared under new serial numbers.
“I spent one hour searching for my name in the updated electoral rolls. Found it after downloading four PDF files and manually checking every name in the list. Thanks to the Election Commission for such a simple process,” exclaimed Srikanth, a netizen on X.
Hyderabad District Congress Committee president Syed Khalid Saifullah urged the city police to remain alert to fraudsters who could attempt to cheat people in the name of SIR verification following the publication of the draft electoral rolls on August 17.
He said the police should anticipate possible attempts by fraudsters to contact electors by citing specific details about whether their names had been retained, deleted or otherwise affected in the draft rolls. Such information, he said, could be used to gain the confidence of unsuspecting citizens before seeking OTPs, bank details or other sensitive information.
