No SoPs shared regarding auto-generated Form 7s with State Electoral Officers

Representative image. | Photo Credit: J. Allen Egenuse

With thousands of names deleted from electoral rolls during phases 2 and 3 of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) using auto-generated Form 7s digitally signed by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), it has now emerged that this exercise is being carried out by State poll authorities without the Election Commission of India (ECI) issuing any written protocol or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

Form 7 is the official voter application form issued by the ECI to object to a proposed entry or request the deletion of an existing name from the electoral rolls.

While there is no provision for EROs or Assistant EROs (AEROs) to file Form 7 themselves under electoral rules, States such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal have witnessed poll officials using this route to omit names from rolls for unresolved logical discrepancies and in cases of voters found to be “unmapped”.

According to several State electoral officials The Hindu spoke with, the ECI’s software, ERONet, automatically generated these Form 7s when officials deleted voters during the SIR hearings. The auto-generated forms came with the officers’ digital signatures.