New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday (September 30) removed the additional declaration added to the online Form 6 in states where the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has been completed. The declaration remains on the ECINET portal in states where the SIR is still underway.Form 6 twice triggered objections within the ECI in the last roughly ten months, with Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi questioning the addition in May and in August, as per a recent expose by the Indian Express.The declaration introduced in the online Form 6 requires voters to mandatorily provide details of their family members (such as parents or grandparents) from an earlier electoral roll, which Sandhu and Joshi said was not prescribed in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.On September 26, the commission decided that the new declaration would apply for SIR, while the statutory Form 6 under the 1960 Rules would be used during non-SIR periods. There is no legal provision for two sets of Form 6s either.Writing on The Wire, former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said, “The September 26 press note does not say whether that online requirement has been removed, who authorised its introduction, or how precisely it related to the statutory Form 6 and the separate declaration prescribed for SIR.”Meanwhile, the ECI has faced growing criticism over not being able to check the number of Form 7s being filed, and for failing to reveal the source of these filings. Form 7 is meant for people to file claims and objections to the inclusion or exclusion – their own or that of others – to the electoral roll after the draft roll has been prepared.Also read: ‘No Protection For Acts Done in Violation of Rules’: Former Minister R.K. Singh Calls for Criminal Case Against CECThe Form 7 issue surfaced most recently in Delhi, where an analysis of records found that some Booth Level Agents (BLAs) had been able to submit more than the prescribed 10 objections a day. Since the ECINET software did not recognise that these applications were being filed BLAs, they could exceed the 10-a-day limit for Form 7s.The Indian Express revealed in its report that in Goa, 97 voters were cleared for inclusion in the electoral roll by the Electoral Roll Officer (ERO) but the software [ERONET] prevented state officials from processing their inclusion.When the Goa exclusions were discussed in the context of one of the excluded families of petitioner Paresh Salgaoncar before the Bombay high court, the ECI argued that these voters’ Form 8 applications could not be processed during that stage of the SIR.The division bench of Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar questioned the ECI for asking the six-member Salgaoncar family to submit Form 6 when they were already registered voters and were simply updating their address. “Can you imagine what will happen, how many voters will lose out like this?” the court said.The ECI has clarified that 81 agreed to fill Form 6; the Salgaoncar family declined.Form 8 is used for voters to declare to the ECI that they have shifted addresses (or to make other changes in their details known to the ECI), which the Salgaoncars said they had done. Yet the ECI has been directing the family (and voters in the same position in other states) to register themselves using Form 6.At a previous hearing for the Salgaoncar family, the high courthad asked the ECI which form they needed to fill to retain their names on the rolls. ECI had said the system did not permit a name to be restored once it had been deleted.“The whole country is facing this. You will have to find some way out,” the court said at the time. The ECI had then directed the Salgaoncars to use [the amended] Form 6.It observed that the statutory forms would lose their purpose if voters could be deleted over software issues and forced to apply afresh. “Otherwise, Form 6, 7 or 8 have no meaning,” the court said.Also read: Three Phases of SIR: How EC Has Applied Varying Rules for the Nationwide Voter Roll Revision“SIR effectively, by whatever instructions, has suspended the full system. It suspends Section 22, Rule 21A and all those rules and says forget about all the laws. Now you follow the software. It cannot be like this. What is the explanation for this?” bench had ruled at an earlier hearing.Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, deals with the EROs powers to make corrections in the voter list and specifically has to do with voters shifting within residences. Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, has to do with the process for the ERO to follow when making deletions from the rolls – and it requires due notice.The Salgaoncar family will be heard on October 8.Similar complaints, on a much larger scale, have emerged from Karnataka and elsewhere. The Hindu‘s Rishita Khanna reported about bulk Form 7 filings in several districts across the state, in which most sought the deletion of Muslim voters’ names. The trend, identified through analysis of Form-10 data, shows the form being used across Belagavi North, Bhalki, Babaleshwar, Basavakalyan and Belthangady to challenge mostly Muslim voters’ inclusion on the rolls.Form 10 is the statutory declaration, by the ECI (not voters), containing a list of the objections to voters’ inclusion (filed using Form 7) on the electoral roll.On September 2, The Wire published a ground report highlighting concerns over attempts to remove the names of Muslim voters from the electoral rolls through Form 7 during the SIR process in Odisha’s Bhadrak. Following the publication of the report, the Election Commission of India (ECI) suspended a key official over suspected irregularities.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.