New Delhi, Oct 9 (PTI) To prevent bulk or malicious attempts to remove legitimate voters from electoral rolls, the Election Commission on Friday introduced specific caps on how many Form 7 applications a single registered elector can submit. These restrictions apply equally, whether the forms are submitted online or offline.
During the special period designated for filing claims and objections – typically known as the Summary Revision period – an individual voter is allowed to submit a maximum of 10 Form 7 applications.
Once this revision period concludes, the process shifts to continuous updation. During this routine period of voter list updation, individual voters are limited to submitting no more than five Form 7 applications in a single calendar month.
Amid reports of bulk filing of such applications or Form 7 from Karnataka and Odisha, the EC has directed all chief electoral officers to brief their field staff about the new directions.
The move aims to discourage bulk filing of unsubstantiated objections, reduce inconvenience to voters and ease the workload of election officials.
According to the reworked mechanism, the electoral registration officer (ERO) will first issue a notice to the objector, hear him personally, record his statements separately for each Form 7 and satisfy himself about the validity of the objections.
When the ERO is satisfied, he will dispose of the application as per Rules 19 and 20 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, giving an opportunity of hearing to the person objected to.
The directive seeks to curb excessive or potentially fabricated objections to electoral rolls while reinforcing verification and procedural safeguards before names are deleted.
The Commission has directed the chief electoral officers of all states and Union Territories to circulate the instructions among the EROs, assistant EROs and field-level officials and ensure adequate publicity.
Form 7 is used to object to a proposed voter inclusion or to request the deletion of a name from the existing electoral roll.
Usually, the elector of a constituency is allowed to fill the form to seek removal of another voter of the same constituency.
In the online version, an Aadhaar-based verification was introduced recently.
Those outside a constituency were allowed to object to a name on the voter list by filing an affidavit. PTI NAB ARI
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