16.18 lakh Form 6 applications filed during enumeration phase of SIR in U.P.: Chief Electoral Officer

Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa on Friday (October 9, 2026) said that about 16.18 lakh Form 6 applications accepted without the names being made public were filed during the enumeration phase of the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise in the State and conducted as per the guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

He was responding to a report by The Reporters’ Collective, which said these Form 6 applications that are used for new voter registrations had been added “mysteriously” and that the names of the applicants had not been disclosed.

The CEO claimed the applications were handled as per the ECI’s directives for the SIR exercise, under which every Booth Level Officer (BLO) was to carry 30 applications of Form 6 for people who wished to register as voters.

Distinct from earlier forms

Mr. Rinwa said these applications were separate from, and in addition to, the Form 6s filed during the claims and objections period that followed the enumeration phase, the list of names which had been made public.

He also said that Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) had filed Form 7, which are applications for deletion of names only in cases where notices had already been issued and the names were found to be ineligible due to various reasons.

In a separate report, The Reporters’ Collective has said that in the Uttar Pradesh SIR exercise, ECI software auto-generated 85,854 forms to delete voters without a reason.

Mr. Rinwa claimed that there was no mention of a reason for the deletions as they had already been issued notices.

About 3.26 crore voters in Uttar Pradesh were issued notices during the SIR. These were voters whose details needed verification after the draft roll of 12.55 crore was published on January 6. The first notices went out on January 14 and hearings began on January 21. Of the total 3.26 crore names, 1.04 crore were “unmapped” voters and 2.22 crore were flagged for logical discrepancies.

A coin toss: Congress

The Opposition Congress said that the right to vote had been reduced to a software-generated game of chance.

“The ECI’s version of a coin toss: Heads: You are a voter. Tails: You are not,” Congress MP Pawan Khera said in a post on X.

“Apparently, that is how electoral democracy works in Uttar Pradesh, where ECI software auto-generated 85,854 voter-deletion forms without citing a reason. Day after day, the indictment of the RSS-BJP-ECI nexus grows deeper. They have reduced the right to vote to a software-generated game of chance —and made a mockery of India’s electoral democracy,” he added.