ECI’s Form 6 explanation needs a paper trail

The Election Commission of India said on September 26 that the additional declaration attached to Form 6 during Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision had been upheld by the Supreme Court. On October 5, Chief Justice Surya Kant said: “Any modified Form 6 has not been approved by us. Let’s be clear.”

The Court has sought the ECI’s records to establish who made or authorised the change. The ECI’s defence is that Form 6 itself was not modified; an additional declaration was attached for the revision exercise. That may eventually prove to be a legally meaningful distinction. It is not, however, a substitute for showing the file.

The May 27 Supreme Court judgment upheld the ECI’s authority to conduct Bihar’s revision. The available reporting does not show that the judgment approved the later Form 6 declaration. The ECI has not publicly produced, in the sources reviewed, the September 26 press note’s original document, the approval record or the exact legal basis for attaching the declaration. An institution that administers the voter list should not expect citizens to reconstruct its reasoning from competing press summaries.

Telangana has its own warning. Disputed Form 7 applications were reported in Musheerabad and Goshamahal. Officials said the applications were rejected, and Hyderabad Police registered an FIR against a BJP booth-level agent in the Musheerabad matter. No eligible voter’s deletion has been established, and coordination behind the submissions remains an allegation. But the episode shows why “nothing happened” is not an adequate electoral safeguard: the record of what was submitted, rejected and investigated matters.

The BJP-led Centre’s domestic record already asks Telangana to trust institutions that often communicate in press-note fragments. Now the ECI wants trust on a distinction between changing a form and attaching a declaration. Fine. Put the documents on the table. Democracy is not improved by making voters audit the footnotes.