EC says old Form 6 will be used in non-SIR period, no mandatory hearings

The Election Commission on Saturday said that the old version of Form 6, used to register new voters, will be used in periods when the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is not underway.

The poll panel also said that persons who have been served a notice as part of the SIR for being “unmapped” or in connection with “logical discrepancies” do not need to mandatorily attend a hearing before the electoral registration officer. The booth-level officers will collect documents from their homes, it added.

In a statement, the Election Commission said that the declaration attached to Form 6 for the voter roll revision exercise had been upheld by the Supreme Court. “For non-SIR period, the forms applicable as per Rules (the Registration of Electors Rules 1960) will be used,” it added.

The decision was made at a meeting of the three election commissioners on Saturday, the first after The Indian Express reported on Wednesday that two of them, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the SIR, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Their objections were related to the registration of new voters and changes to Form 6, appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal and...

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