SIR: Over 99% of hearings concluded; Form-7 auto-generated for every Form-8 resident shift

More than 99% of hearings on notices issued under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) have been completed across Karnataka, with only 19,365 hearings pending, the Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office said on Friday.

Kalaburagi has the highest number of pending hearings at 8,224, followed by Bengaluru Rural at 1,523. Gadag has the fewest, with 10 hearings pending.

Meanwhile, the CEO’s office said that a Form-7, used to seek deletion of a name from the electoral roll or raise an objection to proposed inclusion, is automatically generated for every Form-8 application seeking a shift of residence. Between June 16, when the electoral rolls were frozen, and October 15, 12,79,525 Form-8 applications were received, while 1,55,109 Form-7 applications were filed during the same period.

However, the press release does not clarify whether the automatic generation of Form-7 for applications seeking a shift of residence was also the practice before the SIR. Form-8, when used to seek a shift of residence from one Assembly constituency to another, deletes the elector from the previous address. Therefore, it remains unclear why a separate Form-7 is automatically generated for such applications.

The press release also does not provide a break-up of the Form-8 applications received for shifting residence or specify how many of the automatically generated Form-7s are counted separately in the total. Form-7 is ordinarily used to seek deletion or raise an objection, triggering a process that involves issuing a notice and conducting a hearing.

The number of Form-7 applications has increased significantly since the claims and objections period ended on September 23. As of September 24, the number stood at 61,130. Since then, a further 93,979 applications have been recorded till October 15.