BJP demands fresh check of duplicate voters in Telangana

The Telangana BJP urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to undertake a fresh verification of identified duplicate voter entries in Assembly constituencies across Hyderabad, Rangareddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri districts before the final electoral rolls are published.

In a memorandum submitted to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Wednesday, the party also sought mandatory field verification of high-density household voter entries across all 119 Assembly constituencies in the State. It called for Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to conduct the exercise strictly in accordance with ECI guidelines and provisions of the Representation of the People Act.

A BJP delegation led by the party’s Election Management Committee chairman, Marri Shashidhar Reddy, said that the ECI’s electoral roll management software, ERONET, periodically runs algorithms to identify Demographically Similar Entries (DSE) and Photo Similar Entries (PSE). These checks are carried out at specific stages of electoral roll revision rather than continuously in real time.

ERONET, a centralized national platform managed by the ECI, automatically generates DSE, PSE and household cluster exception reports for all Assembly constituencies. These checks are conducted before the publication of draft electoral rolls during Special Summary Revisions (SSR) and Special Integrated Revisions (SIR).

The BJP further stated that after fresh applications are received through Forms 6, 7 and 8, the system conducts incremental de-duplication exercises by cross-verifying new entries with the existing database. A final verification process is then undertaken before publication of the electoral rolls to ensure that duplicate entries are removed.

However, the party argued that the key challenge lies in the field-level implementation of these procedures. It said BLOs must physically visit households, verify voter details and complete Form 7 proceedings wherever duplicate entries are suspected.

Claiming to possess constituency-wise evidence of ‘duplicate’ voter names in Hyderabad, Rangareddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri districts, the BJP sought a detailed compliance and action-taken report on verification and deletion of duplicate entries. The delegation also included State SIR convenor K. Anthony Reddy and other party leaders.