Telangana SIR: Address change applications at odds with enumeration forms ending up in deletion of voters

Several Instances of voters being kept out of the electoral rolls simply because of their changed address are surfacing during the settlement of Claims & Objections as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls (SIR) in Hyderabad.Applications for change of address which have been rejected during the disposal of Claims & Objections include many by voters who have not participated in the Enumeration process assuming that it would not apply to them due to changed address. In some cases, it was due to misguidance by the officials too. These include applications submitted before the SIR process actually began in Telangana.Linus Santhu from the Secunderabad Cantonment constituency, for instance, submitted his application for address change by filing Form-8 before the start of SIR process.“We collected our Enumeration Forms during the SIR process, but did not submit it thinking that we would get our names included at the old address. Now, we have found out that our names are deleted, with the remark that we were ‘untraceable’,” Santhu related at a recent public hearing conducted by Voter Rights Forum at Lalbazar.Though the Form-8 claims are to be processed within two weeks, it did not happen in a large number of cases, as the Booth Level Officers were neck deep in enumeration work. The delay cost several voters their name in the rolls.“I called the BLO to enquire about the enumeration form, but was told to submit Form 8 first notifying the address change, and that only after that could I file my form,” shared Dev Mitra (name changed as per request), an elector from Khairatabad constituency.She submitted her Form-8 online accordingly on July 12, expecting it to be processed within a week’s time as per the procedure.“For a long time after that, my application’s status was shown as ‘Pending’. I got a message on September 17, that my application had been assigned to a BLO, and later another message that field verification report for the application had been submitted, reassuring me that the application was being processed,” she said.She was crestfallen when she instead received a message recently saying her application was rejected, without stating the reason.Electors who did not submit enumeration forms thinking that it did not apply to them due to their address change applications, have all been summarily deleted from the draft electoral rolls under Absent/Untraceable/Permanently Shifted categories. Though they reached out to the electoral officials, they were not given notice before deletion.In some other cases, the names got deleted even after successful processing of the Form-8 applications, simply because the officials failed to remove the voter’s name at the old address.Maneesh Kumar Kandula, an X user, shared his similar experience. He had submitted Form-8 in 2023, and it was successfully processed. He came to know that his name still remained at the old address despite change of address, when his BLO came with his enumeration form with the same Electoral Photo Identity Card number. He informed her that he had changed his residence.“Now both votes are deleted. This is a defect/bug in your software,” Kandula posted, tagging the Election Commission of India, and wondering why after previously voting in national and local elections, should he apply for enrolment as fresh voter by filing Form 6.As on November 2, 2026, a total 11,63,294 applications were received from Telangana by Form-8, for various corrections including address change. Of these, 9,19,275 were accepted, and 1,64,865 were rejected. The remaining are under process.Of the total, 6,09,466 applications were received during the pre-SIR period between January 1, 2026 and June 14, 2026. Of these, about 3,559 are still pending. A total 5,19,317 have been accepted, and 86,550 were rejected.