Lucknow: Amid the ongoing political slugfest over Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the office of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), on Tuesday dismissed allegations made in a media report about “addition” of names of more than 16 lakh voters and other wrongdoings during the electoral roll exercise.
Uttar Pradesh CEO Navdeep Rinwa denied the allegations made in the report about 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.
The clarification comes at a time when opposition parties, led by Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav, have accused the ECI of bias and alleged deliberate voter deletion during the SIR in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.
Dismissing the allegations made in a digital news platform’s report “The Mysterious 16.18 Lakh Voters Added to Uttar Pradesh’s Roll”, 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 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.
“These forms were collected as per the ECI’s instructions dated October 27, 2025, issued for conducting SIR in Uttar Pradesh among other states,” the CEO office said.
“As per ECI’s above mentioned instructions, forms (Form-6) were to be distributed and collected back from those eligible persons whose enumeration forms were not printed as their names were not figuring in the electoral roll as it existed on October 27, 2025 — the date of the start of the SIR in Uttar Pradesh,” the CEO office added.
“Regarding the allegation of hiding or not publishing the names of such persons, it is clarified that as per Registration of Electors Rules, 1950, and as per ECI’s instructions, only those names (Form-6) were to be included in the list of claims, that is, Form-9 which were received after the publication of the draft electoral roll on January 6, 2026, and the same was displayed on the website of Uttar Pradesh CEO in the claims and objection period during SIR,” it said.
“There was no violation of any provision of the law or rules or instructions of ECI. Regarding the percentage of acceptance of Form-6, the report is based on arbitrary assumptions without any logical reason. There is no formula or logic for the acceptance of forms to adhere to a particular percentage,” it added.
“The Form-6 is accepted after following the due process as per the rules. It is again reiterated that the SIR in Uttar Pradesh was conducted as per law, was transparent, participatory and conducted with active involvement of all the political parties,” it said.
No such allegations have been levelled till date by any political party or person with reference to the SIR conducted in Uttar Pradesh.
(IANS)
