Bengaluru: Karnataka received 1.6 lakh voter enrolment requests through Form 6 in the fortnight after Special Intensive Revision (SIR) claims deadline, signalling a fresh push by political parties to bring voters onto the electoral rolls.By Sept 23, the last day for claims and objections, the state had received 7.8 lakh Form 6 applications. Some 1.6 lakh came in by Oct 8, a rise of about 20% in 15 days.Chief electoral officer V Anbukumar had said applications submitted by Sept 23 would be processed for the final SIR electoral rolls, scheduled for release on Oct 27. Applications received after the deadline will be considered for supplementary rolls, issued every three months, with the first expected in Jan 2027.As per Election Commission of India (ECI) instructions, post-deadline Form 6 applications will not require the 2002 electoral roll mapping component. Introduced through Annexure 4, the declaration sought details of a relative or elector listed in the previous SIR. Following Supreme Court’s intervention and subsequent ECI directions, the declaration form was dropped for applications filed outside the SIR phase.The change comes amid earlier concerns among voters, particularly senior citizens, who told TOI they were reluctant to apply because of the complexity of the SIR process. “However, political workers have been making efforts in the past few days to have voters added to the list,” said a voter from CV Raman Nagar.BJP’s state SIR convener Dattatri said the party was working to recover a substantial share of voters removed from the rolls, while enrolling new electors.“Across the state, we’ve set ourselves a target of getting back at least 50% of the votes that were lost. Our youth workers are focusing on adding new voters. And Karyakartas are going door to door to focus on the family that has shifted in, and enrol them if they do not have a vote in another place,” he said.The party plans to step up its efforts after the final rolls are published and ECI’s mandated mop-up exercise begins. Dattatri said the prospect of panchayat elections had also accelerated enrolment efforts across parties.GC Chandrashekar, who is coordinating Congress’s SIR efforts, questioned ECI’s rationale for a mop-up exercise to restore voters excluded during the revision. “Do they admit they made a mistake?” he asked.Chandrashekar said the Congress would work to restore genuine voters removed from the rolls under the ASDDO category but oppose attempts to enrol people already registered elsewhere. “We’ll oppose it if outsiders without votes here are added,” he said.
