'Misleading': UP CEO rejects report of 85,854 voters being deleted using Form-7

Lucknow, Oct 13
The office of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Tuesday rejected the claims that the Election Commission of India (ECI) "forced" officers to sign deletion forms for 85,854 voters without giving any reason during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.

According to a media report, during the SIR in Uttar Pradesh, the ECI's ERONET software auto-generated 85,854 Form-7 applications (objections to voter inclusion/deletion) without specifying a valid reason.

Calling the claims "misleading", Uttar Pradesh CEO Navdeep Rinwa's office countered the media report alleging post-deadline, reasonless software-generated forms by the ECI's ERONET system in UP's electoral revision, stating actions followed notices, hearings, scrutiny, and recorded orders.

"Claims that 85,854 Form-7 entries were auto-generated to delete UP voters without reason during SIR are misleading. Notices, hearings, scrutiny and recorded orders preceded action. Pending cases were decided after 6 March as per procedure," the CEO's office said in a statement.

Accompanying infographics outlined the four-step process -- discrepancy identification in documents or data, issuance of written notices, opportunity for hearings with evidence review, and final deletion orders only where voters were deemed ineligible.

The CEO urged the people to rely on official sources.

This comes amid the ongoing political slugfest over the SIR of electoral rolls. The Opposition parties have accused the ECI of bias, alleging deliberate voter deletion during the SIR in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

Earlier this month, the office of the Uttar Pradesh CEO dismissed allegations in a media report about the "addition" of names of more than 16 lakh voters and other wrongdoings during the electoral roll exercise.

The CEO's office denied the allegations made in the report about the addition of more than 16 lakh voters, calling the claims "incorrect" and "based on faulty assumptions".

"The SIR has been conducted in Uttar Pradesh with utmost transparency and strictly in accordance with the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, and the extant instructions of the Election Commission of India (ECI)," the CEO office said in a statement.

Dismissing the allegations made in a digital news platform's report, the CEO said that 16.18 lakh forms (Form-6 for addition of name of a person in the electoral rolls) were collected before the date of publication of the draft roll (January 6, 2026) during house-to-house visits of Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in the enumeration phase from October 27, 2025 to January 6, 2026.