The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday set a ceiling on the number of Form 7 applications a single elector can file, saying bulk objections on “unsubstantiated grounds” were inconveniencing voters and overloading field staff.
In an instruction to the chief electoral officers of all states and Union territories (UTs), the poll body said an individual elector can file at most 10 Form 7 applications during the entire claims-and-objections period. Form 7 is used to object to the inclusion of a name in the electoral roll or to seek deletion, and can be filed only by a person already registered in that constituency. More recently, Form 7 has been at the centre of a controversy after cases of its alleged misuse were reported from Karnataka, Telangana and Rajasthan. In Telangana, the Congress first raised the issue in Hyderabad’s Musheerabad on October 1, alleging that a BJP booth-level agent had filed more than 30 Form 7 applications seeking the deletion of members of a single Muslim family. Where a complaint is found to be false or fabricated, the ERO shall act under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which penalises false declarations. For the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR), booth-level agents of recognised parties remain bound by existing caps of 50 forms a day before draft publication and 10 a day after.
Similar bulk applications were reported in the Bahadurpura and Goshamahal constituencies, with pre-filled forms that left the applicant details blank. During continuous updation of electoral rolls, the cap is five per month. They must verify the applicant against the electoral roll, issue a notice and hear the objector separately for each form, and give the person whose name is being challenged an opportunity to be heard before passing an order.
The limits apply to both online and offline filings, it said. The Commission said that while online filings were capped at six at a time, “the number of physical forms presented in bulk has not been defined and has been left to the judgement of the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), which is creating challenges for the field functionaries. The Manual on Electoral Rolls already says bulk claims by an individual should not be entertained. The poll body also told EROs to reject forms with incomplete details or without the objector’s original signature, noting that a seal cannot replace it.
