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Activists monitoring the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Telangana have urged the Election Commission to give a chance to challenge any wrongful categorisations under the Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others (ASDDO) or ‘uncollectable’ tag.
Telangana Chief Electoral Officer C Sudarshan Reddy had recently announced that by the end of the enumeration period which concluded on August 10, around 73.39 lakh enumeration forms, or 21.70% of the total voters in the state, were classified as “uncollectable”.
Of these, 9.22 lakh voters were marked as dead, 11.25 lakh were classified as absent or untraceable, 45.18 lakh voters were found to have permanently shifted, while 6.70 lakh were marked as already enrolled. Around 1.02 lakh voters were listed under the ‘others’ category.
While the draft electoral roll is set to be published on August 17, activists SQ Masood and MA Mujeeb argued that such a large number of electors need additional safeguards before being potentially deleted. They sought 15 days of additional time to provide an effective opportunity to challenge any wrongful ASDDO/uncollectable categorisation before publication of the draft electoral roll.
In a press release issued on August 15, Masood and Mujeeb, who run the civil society organisations ASEEM and ADALAH, stressed that not collecting or submitting an enumeration form alone cannot establish that an elector is dead, permanently shifted or otherwise ineligible to remain enrolled.
They sought a minimum 15-day extension before publishing the draft roll, to provide voters categorised as ASDD/uncollectable a chance to verify their ASDD status and challenge any incorrect categorisation.
They also urged the ECI to protect the continuity of existing voters’ registration and electoral record, noting that an elector who has been enrolled for many years could potentially find their name wrongfully omitted from the draft roll and subsequently be required to submit a fresh Form-6 application, which is used by a person to seek inclusion of their name in the electoral roll as a new voter.
“An error during enumeration should not erase an elector's electoral history. The electoral existence of an existing voter should not be treated as beginning afresh merely because of an erroneous ASDD categorisation,” they said.
ASEEM and ADALAH urged the ECI to clearly distinguish between a first-time applicant seeking inclusion and an existing voter whose name has been wrongly omitted or deleted. They said that Form-6 should not automatically become a substitute for restoration of an existing electoral entry where an eligible voter has been wrongly omitted.
They pointed out that in cases involving deceased electors, the prescribed verification and Form-7 procedure must be followed before deletion. Form-7 is used to request deletion of a name from the electoral roll, including in cases where a voter has died.
The organisations also urged the Election Commission to provide an official elector-wise online search facility to check whether their names have been categorised as ASDD/uncollectable.