Karnataka: 61,000 Form-7 deletion requests filed by poll officials, none with a reason

Election officials in Karnataka filed at least 61,059 Form-7 applications seeking the deletion of names from the state's electoral rolls, and not one of the forms stated a reason for the deletion — a detail that the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 require to be recorded. The figure comes from data reported by The Hindu, which examined applications in which Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) were themselves listed as the objectors.

Under the rules, Form-7 is the prescribed way to object to a name on the roll. Officials said the forms in these cases were "auto-generated" with their digital signatures when voters could not be reached during hearings on notices issued for missing mapping or logical discrepancies, after which the voters were marked "ineligible".

The arrangement means the same election machinery raised the objection and then decided whether the voter should remain on the roll. Under Rule 17 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, any claim or objection not lodged within the prescribed period, or not in the prescribed form and manner, "shall be rejected by the registration officer". A form that leaves the reason blank would not meet that prescribed manner.

Officials said they had been instructed to file Form-7 applications where a voter had shifted, had a duplicate entry elsewhere, was underage, had died, or was not an Indian citizen. Because the forms were generated automatically, the reason for seeking deletion was left empty.

With no reason on record, neither the voter nor anyone examining the electoral roll can establish why a name was marked for deletion, or verify whether the removal was justified. These categories — Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others — had already been checked during the enumeration phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which led to more than 1.07 crore names being removed from Karnataka's draft electoral roll. Most deletions were on the grounds of voters having permanently shifted, followed by those marked absent.

The number of Form-7 applications filed by election officials rose sharply after the claims and objections period ended on September 23, 2026. Between August 24 and September 23, only 192 such applications were received. More than 60,800 were filed between September 24 and October 22.

Filing continued at a high rate as the disposal deadline approached. On October 22, the last day for disposing of claims and objections, officials filed 10,105 Form-7 applications. Another 10,314 were filed on October 21, while 11,132 and 11,760 applications were filed on October 17 and 19 respectively.

To examine the pattern, The Hindu obtained the EPIC numbers of several voters against whom officials had filed Form-7 applications and cross-checked their details on the Election Commission of India (ECI) portal. In every case checked, the names had already been deleted from the roll, including those against which applications were filed after September 23. It also remains unclear whether the hearing notices and orders that are mandatory before deletion were issued in these cases, or on what grounds the names were removed, since the relevant details were left blank.

In the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike South district, which recorded the highest number of such applications, forms filed by officials outnumbered those filed by voters or third parties. Of the 17,491 applications in the district, 10,374 were filed by officials. In the Bommanahalli Assembly constituency alone, officials filed 4,095 of the 5,757 applications received. The pattern was seen in at least 26 Assembly constituencies.

Karnataka's final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on October 27. The ECI has described the SIR exercise as an effort to remove duplicate and ineligible entries, while opposition parties and civil society groups have urged greater transparency in how deletions are recorded and communicated to voters.