New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) has added a new declaration to the online version of Form 6, the application form used by new voters to enrol in electoral rolls, requiring applicants to disclose whether they or their parents featured in the last Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, The Indian Express reported on Sunday (July 12).According to the newspaper, the ECINET portal now contains an unlettered “declaration form” inserted between Parts J and K of Form 6. While the downloadable version of Form 6 available on the same portal does not contain the new section, applicants using the online form “cannot move forward toward the submission before completing it,” although the declaration is not explicitly marked mandatory.The development comes amid scrutiny of the EC’s nationwide SIR exercise, under which more than 5.58 crore names have been deleted from electoral rolls across 10 states and three Union Territories since last year, according to the Indian Express. The newspaper said the deletions have raised concerns about the implications for children of those whose names were removed.According to report, the new declaration is visible for applicants from all states and Union Territories where the SIR has concluded in 2025-26 or is underway, except Bihar, where the exercise first began in June last year, and Assam, where the EC has decided not to conduct an SIR.Applicants are asked to choose from three options – “my name exists in Electoral Roll of last SIR”, “my parents name (Father, Mother, Grandfather, Grandmother) exists in the electoral roll of last SIR” and the third one is “neither my name nor my parents name exists in the electoral roll of last SIR”.If applicants select either of the first two options, they are required to provide the Assembly constituency, polling station number and serial number where their or their parents’ names appeared in the last SIR electoral roll. The newspaper reported that if applicants cannot locate those details, “the only option is to select the third one.” It added that “the portal does not say what will happen if the applicant selects the last option.”The Indian Express reported that the online change has been introduced without any corresponding amendment to the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. Citing Section 28 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, it noted that the law says, “The Central Government may, after consulting the Election Commission, by notification in the Official Gazette, make rules for carrying out the purposes of this Act.”Two former senior EC officials stated that any modification to the form would require at least an amendment to the rules. “The EC cannot even add a comma to the form on its own,” one of the former officials told the newspaper.As an example, the report noted that after parliament amended the Representation of the People Act in 2021 to allow the EC to collect Aadhaar numbers from electors, the Legislative Department of the Law Ministry issued a notification in June 2022 making the necessary changes to the Registration of Electors Rules and Form 6. The EC did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.