SIR is a de novo exercise and due procedure was followed, says Telangana Chief Electoral Officer

Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudarshan Reddy termed the ongoing Special Intensive Revision as a de novo (afresh or anew) exercise undertaken to cleanse the electoral roll.

Seeking to counter a report published by The Hindu on bulk deletion of ‘Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate’ (ASDD) voters through the ERONET app without following due procedure, Mr. Reddy posted a comment from his official account on X to say that the story was incorrect, maintaining that the SIR was a de novo exercise.

De novo preparation of electoral rolls entails creating a brand-new voter list completely from scratch, rather than simply updating or modifying an existing list.

As against the Special Summary Revision, the de novo revision does not take the existing list as the base, to add newly eligible voters, and make corrections based on claims and objections.

It discards the existing list, and aims to reach out to every single eligible individual to re-establish their identity and place of residence to form a new baseline roll.

The 2002 SIR in Telangana was taken up as a de novo exercise, whereby the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) conducted door to door survey of voters and enrolled them. After that, de novo exercises remained largely limited to graduate constituencies, and service electors.

Adding to his contention on X, Mr.Reddy said enumeration forms are distributed to electors by BLOs and the filled-in forms are collected back.

“The electors who failed to return the EFs are marked as ASDD categories after due field verification and enquiry by BLOs. Such categories are not included in the draft rolls,” he said.

The ASDD categories have been displayed in ERO and AERO offices and also in CEO and DEO websites, and the details have been shared with Booth Level Agents and political parties, he noted, concluding that the non-inclusion in draft rolls is done after following due procedure.

However, the CEO failed to respond to the query on why the 2025 rolls were taken as the basis for distribution of enumeration forms if it was a de novo exercise.

Several users on X challenged the CEO’s statement, and said BLOs had not undertaken home visits. “The first sentence of your statement is completely correct: ‘The electors who failed to return the EFs are marked under the ASDD categories.’ No efforts were made to collect the EFs from the voters,” posted S.Q.Masood, a social activist.

“Don’t tell lies, sir. No BLO has come to any voter’s home, no notice has been given. We ourselves had to rush and collect them,” posted another user.

In a separate comment, Mr.Reddy sought to clarify that the ASDD lists had been displayed on the websites and were available at BLO and ERO (electoral registration officer) level. If any person is wrongly marked as ASDD, they can always file Form 6, he said.

The Hindu reported that a bulk of voters from the ASDD list, totalling over 73 lakh, were deleted by way of auto-generated Form-7s on the ERONET software, digitally signed off by the respective EROs, without due procedure for deletion of voters.

With a majority of the BLOs not going from house to house distributing/collecting the enumeration forms, the sanctity of ASDD list becomes questionable, as it mostly contains names of voters who had not taken or returned the forms.