This one is genuinely concerning to read about. Election Commission of India has now quietly added new section to its online Form-6 — the form used for registering new voters — and what this section is asking for is raising real questions about voter rights and legal authority.
So basically,for first time,Form-6 now includes part where applicant has to provide information about their parents and whether those parents' names were included in last Special Intensive Revision,or SIR,of electoral rolls. On surface that might sound like routine administrative update. But context around it makes everything much more uncomfortable.
Because right now,over 5.58 crore names have already been removed from electoral rolls across 10 states and 3 Union Territories as part of ongoing SIR process that began last year. That is not small number at all. And deletion of parent's name could now potentially affect their children's ability to register as voters. That connection is what makes this update feel less like housekeeping and more like something bigger.
Situation in West Bengal is especially serious. Over 27 lakh electors were deleted during adjudication process there,which meant they could not vote in recent elections while their appeals were still pending. People lost voting rights before their cases were even resolved . And now this new Form-6 section ties younger voters' registration to whether their parents survived that same deletion process.
Few things that really stand out here:
- New declaration section appears only on online ECINET portal version of Form-6 and is missing from downloadable version entirely,which creates direct confusion for applicants.
- Although section is not marked as mandatory,applicants still cannot proceed with registration without completing it — which is honestly a strange way to design something that is supposedly optional .
- Form gives no explanation about what happens if applicant selects option indicating neither their name nor their parents' names exist in electoral roll at all.
And this is where legal question becomes really sharp. According to Section 28 of Representation of People Act,1950,it is actually Central Government's responsibility to amend rules around voter registration forms — not Election Commission alone. Historical precedent supports this too. When ECI wanted to collect Aadhaar numbers after 2021 legislative change,Law Ministry had to issue formal notification before Form-6 could be changed. That proper process was followed then. But in this case,no such formal amendment process involving Parliament or Law Ministry appears to have been followed.
Former ECI officials,speaking on condition of anonymity,were direct about this . They said Commission simply does not have authority to make unilateral changes to Form-6 on its own. Any modification requires formal notification from Law Ministry. That process was not followed here .
ECI has not publicly commented on any of this. Attempts to reach Legislative Department Secretary have also been unsuccessful according to reports.
And that silence itself is telling something. An institution making changes to fundamental voter registration process,changes that could affect crores of families,and then offering no public explanation for legal basis of those changes…
The real question sitting underneath all of this is whether new form requirements could be used,intentionally or otherwise,to make voter registration harder for children of people already deleted from rolls . Nobody has answered that yet .
