Only 89 primary and one final appeal filed to contest electoral rolls nationwide

Representational image of a voter checking the electoral rolls
| Photo Credit: K. Bhagya Prakash

Even as numerous Opposition parties have made charges of voter roll manipulations, there have been hardly any appeals filed by them on inclusion or exclusion of voters after publication of Special Summary Electoral Rolls.

As per reports filed by Chief Electoral Officers (CEO) of 36 States and Union Territories, accessed by The Hindu, there have been 89 primary appeals and only one final appeal made before the Maharashtra Assembly polls. Since the Lok Sabha elections held in 2024 and till after the final publication of SSR on January 7 this year, no other appeal had been made by any political party in any other State.

​Double trouble: On elections, the EPIC number and the voter 

The reports filed by the CEOs take in to consideration the countrywide Special Summary Revision (SSR) of Electoral Rolls in nearly 10.5 Lakh Polling Booths and in all 4,123 Assembly Constituencies of the country. It also includes the SSR which was specifically done for States/ UTs that went for assembly elections after Lok Sabha election in 2024, including Maharashtra, Haryana and Delhi.

The electoral roll is in a state of continuous updation throughout the year, except during an election in a constituency for a period from the last date of filing nominations to completion of the election process. With an amendment made in the Representation of the People Act 1950, four qualifying dates i.e., January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 have come into effect in a calendar year in place of one qualifying date of January 1. However, the Annual Summary Revision with all pre-revision activities is conducted with reference to January 1 of the year only, in which the roll is finally published, as qualifying date.

Section 24 of the Representation of People Act, 1961, says appeals contesting inclusion or exclusion of names in electoral rolls can first be filed with the District Magistrate and then with the Chief Electoral Officers. As per Rule 27 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, the first appeal to DM can be filed within 15 days of the order of ERO and the second appeal to CEO can be filed within 30 days of the order of DM. However, the delay in filing appeal can be condoned by DM and/or CEO as per the proviso of Rule 27.

Ever since the Maharashtra Assembly poll results brought the BJP-led Maha Yuti back to power, the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi has been claiming that the there was an unnaturally large number of people added to the list in five months since the Lok Sabha polls. Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had claimed that 39 lakh names were added to the rolls before the Assembly elections, which was equivalent to the voting population of a State like Himachal Pradesh.

More recently, the Trinamool Congress had made public a list of duplicate voter IDs or EPIC numbers prompting the Election Commission to say that the matter would be redressed within a period of three months.

The Opposition parties had, however, intensified their attack on the panel. They alleged that the ECI’s defence that duplicate IDs exist in different States, showed its “complicity” in voter “manipulation”.

To assuage concerns regarding electoral practices and rules, the ECI has last month also initiated meetings at the grassroots level with political parties across the country on all pending issues, including updation of electoral rolls.

Nearly 5,000 such meetings have been held so far through this engagement drive, the ECI’s biggest so far. The commission met over 28,000 representatives of political parties.  The poll body is also holding training of Booth Level Agents (BLA) of political parties in poll-bound states like Bihar.