Uttarakhand ERO refused BJP worker’s bulk Form 7 objections. After ECI complaint, 5,359 were accepted

In August, Newslaundry reported how bulk Form 7 applications were being used to target voters in Uttarakhand during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Across constituencies in the state, thousands of Form 7 applications were filed by BJP workers, with most objections targeting Muslim voters.

In Kichha constituency of Udham Singh Nagar district, our investigation found that 4,390 names that appeared in the draft electoral roll were missing from the final roll released on October 3. Of these, around 670 were voters against whom Form 7 objections had been filed in August, 509 of them by Rajesh Tiwari, a booth-level agent (BLA) associated with the BJP. 

Of the 6,884 Form 7 objections accepted in Kichha, 5,359 were Tiwari’s. He is a close associate of former MLA Rajesh Shukla and BJP district cell coordinator of Udham Singh Nagar. 

Speaking to Newslaundry, Tiwari claimed that the local electoral registration officer (ERO) initially refused to accept the bulk Form 7 objections, saying there was no such provision in Election Commission of India (ECI) rules. He said he then emailed the ECI and complained against the ERO. Newslaundry has not been able to independently verify the contents of this email.  

“Within two days of sending the email, the ERO’s office called and asked me to submit the objections,” he said, adding that the ERO accepted the bulk Form 7 objections on directions from the ECI. 

Kichha ERO Gaurav Pandey neither confirmed nor denied these claims. He told Newslaundry, “Our SIR has been completed. We have heard the claims and objections, and that process is also over. Other than that, I cannot comment on this.” Asked whether he had received specific directions from the ECI on Tiwari’s objections, he said, “I cannot comment on this.” He added that the process had taken place two months ago and he could not recall all the details. On the deletions, he said, “Whatever we have done is in accordance with ECI rules and regulations.”

Separately, in Uttarakhand, the claims and objections period ended on August 13 and was not extended. According to Form 10 data from the office of the Uttarakhand Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), reviewed by Newslaundry, 504 of Tiwari’s 5,359 accepted Form 7 objections carry an acceptance date of August 14. We have emailed the Uttarakhand CEO and the Kichha ERO asking why these objections were accepted a day after the deadline. We will update this report if we receive a response.

Largest individual objector of Uttarakhand 

Form 7 is used to object to the inclusion of a voter’s name, or seek its deletion, from the electoral roll. Tiwari filed the highest number of such objections in Uttarakhand, and Kichha, where most of his objections were filed, ranked among the top five constituencies in the state for the number of Form 7 filings. 

When Newslaundry first reported on Tiwari’s bulk Form 7 objections, Kichha ERO Gaurav Pandey told us that the online portal had accepted the applications and that they would be cross-verified as per the standard procedure. After our report and the Congress taking up the issue, the number of deletions came down but several voters were still affected.

The ECI’s Electoral Manual 2023 stated that a BLA could submit no more than 10 Form 7 applications in a day. This limit was later increased to 50 a day. In January this year, a letter issued to the West Bengal CEO removed the cap altogether, while making a review mandatory if a single objector submitted more than five forms. On October 9, after bulk Form 7 objections led to protest in Karnataka, the ECI ordered all state CEOs that an individual elector could file a maximum of 10 Form 7 applications, and no more than five a month during continuous updation of rolls. 

Of the 4,390 names missing from Kichha’s final electoral roll, 3,720 had no objections filed against them. The ERO deleted these voters on the basis of logical discrepancies, a mismatch in voter data that the ECI believes requires additional verification before the electoral roll is finalised.

We reached Tiwari at his office in Kichha’s Narayanpur area on October 18, and asked him why he had filed so many objections and why the names he targeted were all Muslim. 

He said the party had received information that around 6,000 voters registered in Kichha also had their names, along with their parents’ names, registered in the Assembly constituencies of Baheri, Bilaspur, Rampur, Mirganj and Pilibhit in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. The party obtained the final Uttar Pradesh electoral roll after it was published in January, he said. The party’s BLAs and workers then prepared a list of these voters, along with their EPIC numbers, and submitted it to the Kichha ERO. 

On why all the names were Muslim, Tiwari claimed, “Most of the people in our neighbouring areas are Muslims who have come and settled here. Besides, the number of Muslim voters in our constituency has increased rapidly while more Hindu voters have been deleted from our constituency, as they have shifted to other places.” According to Chanakyya, a political consultancy, 28.4% of Kichha’s voters are Muslim, which is more than twice the community’s share of Uttarakhand’s population. In the 2022 Assembly election, Congress candidate Tilak Raj Behar defeated Shukla, a two-time MLA, by more than 10,000 votes.

“Nearly 6,000 objections were submitted in my name. But after looking at the final roll, it seems that not many names have been deleted. But I do not find any wrong in SIR. It was conducted properly with no mistakes,” he said.

Congress says BJP BLA’s objections based on false information

Kichha Congress MLA Tilak Raj Behar made a similar claim, saying the ERO had told him the objections were being accepted because the BJP had complained against him.

Behar also alleged that the objections filed by the BJP were based on false and incorrect information. “We prepared a list of 100 such people against whom the BJP had provided incorrect information and submitted it to the Election Commission and senior officials. The Election Commission’s intentions are not at all clear. They want to delete as many names as possible,” he said.

We have emailed a questionnaire to the Uttarakhand CEO, Chief Election Commissioner of India, Election Commissioners and the media division of the ECI, asking about Tiwari’s claim that the ECI directed the ERO to accept his bulk Form 7 objections. The ECI acknowledged our email and asked for our details, but did not answer our questions. We will update this report if we receive a response. 

In part two, we meet voters in Kichha whose names are missing from the final roll. Several were targeted in Tiwari’s objections, which claimed they were “already enrolled” elsewhere, yet the ERO’s notices to them gave entirely different reasons such as incorrect mapping with the 2002-03 roll. Most of them had never heard of Tiwari, while others against whom no Form 7 was filed claim that they submitted every document asked of them, and were still removed. Several were then told to file Form 6, the form meant for first-time voters, to get their names back on the roll.

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