Election Commission officials in Karnataka have said the electoral system auto generated 61,059 Form 7 applications bearing the digital signatures of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) when voters could not be reached during hearings on notices issued over unmapped records or logical discrepancies.
The explanation comes amid a controversy over why none of the applications specified the grounds for seeking deletion of voters’ names.
The officers, listed as the objectors in the applications, said the forms were generated during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, with the voters concerned marked as “ineligible” after they could not be contacted during the hearings.
“These applications appear to have been generated as part of the verification process for voters whose records could not be mapped or who had discrepancies in their details. When the field verification process could not establish contact with a voter, the case may have been escalated through the system, which generated a form 7 without citing reasons,” the official said. The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, prescribe the procedure for filing objections to electoral roll entries.
The grounds cited and the steps followed by election officials are therefore central to determining whether the applications were processed in accordance with the rules.
The applications appeared to have been generated in cases where voters’ details could not be mapped to the previous electoral roll or showed logical discrepancies, according to an official familiar with the process.
