Hyderabad: With over 90 lakh electors flagged for anomalies and unmapped in Telangana’s draft electoral roll, Telangana Voter Rights Forum (TVRF) has urged chief electoral officer (CEO) to extend the claims and objections period till Dec 31, arguing that the present timeline is inadequate for corrections on such a scale.The forum said the discrepancies resulted from a rushed door-to-door enumeration, inadequate public outreach, and failures at different levels to help voters establish their linkage with the 2002 electoral roll.Forms uncollected, names missingTVRF said several voters complained that booth-level officers (BLOs) did not collect forms despite repeated calls. In other instances, people who submitted forms online or offline found their names missing from the draft roll, while some online registrations resulted in misspelt names.The forum sought at least three to four days for every elector to respond after a notice is served. It said BLOs should have adequate time and resources to serve notices personally, while voters should be given reasonable time considering work commitments, illness, travel, pregnancy, old age, disability and emergencies.Allow relatives to submit documentsTVRF also sought permission for family members to represent electors who cannot appear personally because they are studying abroad, hospitalised, travelling for work, elderly or unwell. It cited a West Bengal govt memo dated Jan 8, 2026, saying such representation had been permitted there.The forum also demanded removal of what it termed ‘contradictory’ Aadhaar gatekeeping. It argued that while Aadhaar was not accepted by Election Commission as proof of citizenship or voting eligibility, authentication was being made effectively indispensable at different stages, including enumeration, document submission, corrections and notice responses.It also sought wider availability of Form 8 for correcting clerical errors in names, addresses and relatives’ names, with applications examined strictly under the rules.The petition was signed by Prof Padmaja Shaw, former IAS officer Murali Akunuri, NAPM’s Meera Sanghamitra and Kirankumar Vissa, activists Syed Jalaluddin Zafar, A Suneetha, K Sajaya, Deepti Sirla, RTI activist M A Akram and Rythu Swarajya Vedika’s Sreeharsha.
