The botched-up enumeration phase of the Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls in Telangana has left 94 lakh electors at the mercy of 119 Electoral Registration Officers (EROs). The promised three door-to-door visits by Booth Level Officers did not happen, resulting in a large number of voters not filling in their details correctly in the Enumeration Forms.
As a result, the work for the EROs has increased significantly. After the publication of draft electoral rolls on August 17, the EROs will have to conduct hearings for verification of close to 94 lakh voters within two months, which is a daunting task. Of these, more than 32 lakh are unmapped voters who did not fill in their details in the first section of the forms or their parents’ details from 2002 in the second section.
The forms had three distinct sections, but many voters, not knowing the format, entered their current details in the first section, leaving out the Polling Station numbers and Part Numbers blank. Door-to-door visits by Booth Level Officers, which could have helped them understand the process, did not happen in many instances. Instead, BLOs in a large number of localities confined their roles to distributing the forms and collecting them back, sitting at a central location.
Electoral officials had asserted that the BLOs must visit each household at least thrice during the phase, but the targets given were impossible for the BLOs. Eventually, the officials made it the electors’ duty to return the filled-in forms, extending the Enumeration phase twice to make that happen. A total of 61.4 lakh logical discrepancies/anomalies were reportedly discovered in the submitted forms, which, when clubbed with the number of unmapped electors, means that nearly 94 lakh electors will have to be served notices to attend hearings before the EROs.
The notice period will begin on August 17, 2026, and continue up to October 15, 2026, leaving the EROs exactly 60 days to issue notices and conduct hearings. Even if the notices are served within the first fortnight, it would leave 45 days for hearings. With 119 EROs endowed with quasi-judicial powers set to adjudicate over 94 lakh cases in this short window, they would get less than a minute’s time to verify each elector even if they worked 24 hours a day.
Completion of the process with any reasonable time allocation, say 15 minutes per elector, will need seven to eight years’ time when done with utmost rigour. EROs will also have to settle claims and objections simultaneously, apart from accepting fresh applications by electors deleted from the rolls.
