‘Illegal, unauthorised’: Election Commissioners objected to Form 6 change

The change is “illegal,” “unauthorised,” it needs to be sent to the Government…it must be removed immediately so that young, first-time voters are not harassed. The warning by the two Election Commissioners couldn’t have been clearer — and yet it was ignored.

The change brought questions related to SIR into Form 6, the form new voters have to fill. It asked applicants to choose one of three statements: whether their name appeared in electoral roll during the last SIR held in the early 2000s, whether the name of a parent or grandparent appeared in that roll, or whether neither their name nor that of their parents appeared in it.

The section itself was not marked mandatory, but applicants could not proceed to submit the form without answering it.

Internal records investigated by The Indian Express show this declaration was added despite two of the Commission’s three members recording in May that it could not be done without amending the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, notified by the Centre after consultation with the Election Commission.

2 Commissioners, 1 warning

On May 16, responding to the proposal to change Form 6 through the SIR framework,  Election Commissioner Vivek Joshi recorded his objections. The SIR, he noted, was being conducted under Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 — the provision that lets the Commission order a special revision of the roll — “as one time measure and exception”.

The forms prescribed for the SIR were specific to that exercise and were non-statutory, or not part of law, he wrote. Form 6 and Form 8 (for making changes and corrections): they are “prescribed statutorily” and “cannot be altered without making amendments in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960”. Joshi specifically rejected the idea that a sentence in an SIR order or guideline could change a form fixed by law.

His conclusion was that the “best and legally sustainable course of action” would be to send the proposal to the Government for changes to the rules. He also proposed that a draft of the changes to Form 6 and Form 8 be put before the Commission immediately. On May 19, his colleague on the panel Sukhbir Singh Sandhu concurred with Joshi on file.

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On July 12, The Indian Express first reported on the new declaration in Form 6 on the Commission’s ECINet portal. On August 13, referring to The Indian Express report, Sandhu wrote to the Deputy Election Commissioner and the Director General in charge of IT, with Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Joshi copied on the note.

Sandhu recalled Joshi’s May 16 note, with which he had agreed, that Form 6 was a statutory form embedded in the rules and could not be changed without approval from the competent authority — meaning, the Government.

“In spite of these very clear views expressed by two Election Commissioners,” Sandhu wrote, the “unauthorised/ illegal changes in Form-6 on the portal” had not been removed and the original form had not been restored. The changes “must be removed immediately so that young and would-be first time voters, who are otherwise eligible, can register themselves as voters as per law, without any harassment”, he wrote.

What the addition means

The right to vote belongs to the individual: a person qualifies by age, citizenship and residence, not by whether their parents made it through the last revision. And, in a deeply contested SIR where over 13 crore people have already been dropped from the list, inserting such a question puts a shadow on their children as well.

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Indeed, the new question on Form 6 mattered most to new voters whose parents or grandparents did not figure in the rolls prepared after the last SIR. An 18-year-old in such a family could not truthfully choose either of the first two options, and the form did not explain what would happen if they chose the third.

It also assumes significance because there is already a clear route for changing Form 6. In 2021, Parliament amended the Representation of the People Act, 1950 to allow the Commission to collect Aadhaar numbers from voters. That change to Form 6 was not made by the Commission itself: on June 17, 2022, the Law Ministry’s Legislative Department notified the corresponding changes to the Registration of Electors Rules and Form 6. It was against this legal framework that the proposed SIR-linked change to Form 6 came before the Commission this year.

Key Takeaways

• Two Election Commissioners labelled changes to Form 6 “illegal” and “unauthorised,” warning of voter harassment.
• Form 6 was altered to ask new voters about their parents’ or grandparents’ appearance in the 2000 electoral roll.
• While marked non-mandatory, the form could not be submitted without answering this specific declaration.
• ECs Joshi and Sandhu argued in May that statutory forms cannot be altered without amending the 1960 Rules.
• The Commission was advised to seek Government approval for rule changes, but the illegal form remained online.
• The change disproportionately impacts new voters whose families were dropped during the 2000 SIR process.
• Past amendments, such as Aadhaar collection, followed legal procedure via Law Ministry notification.
• Commissioner Sandhu demanded immediate removal of the unauthorised changes to prevent voter disenfranchisement.