New Delhi: In a significant administrative update to voter registration protocols, the Election Commission of India has mandated that new applicants seeking inclusion in the voter list must submit their parents’ Special Intensive Revision details to proceed with their application. According to election commission officials, this new directive does not apply solely to existing voters who missed out on previous revision drives, but also actively encompasses first-time voters filling out Form 6. Under the new guidelines, individuals executing the application process online will discover that the digital portal restricts further progress until the mandatory declaration segment is fully completed.
The operational template for this system was initially introduced during the Bihar Special Intensive Revision rollout in June last year, where first-time electors were required to file the specific parental declaration alongside Form 6. An election commission functionary noted that day-to-day data bulletins from the Bihar drive successfully demonstrated the systematic integration of the form alongside these mandatory declarations. The official further clarified that while the declaration has been fully implemented through direct administrative instructions, Form 6 itself has not undergone any statutory legal amendment. This procedural adjustment serves the administrative purpose of mapping electors across generations while simultaneously reducing the volume of physical documents new voters are required to compile and submit during the application phase.
Concurrently, the electoral authority has mounted a firm defense of the ongoing nationwide Special Intensive Revision process, categorically dismissing concerns raised by various external groups and asserting that the exercise remains transparent, entirely constitutional, and fully endorsed by the Supreme Court. The primary objective of the intensive clean-up drive is to build an inclusive list of eligible Indian citizens while methodically purging duplicate, deceased, permanently shifted, absent, and non-citizen entries from the records. Responding to public allegations regarding the purported large-scale deletion of minority voters in high-profile constituencies such as Nandigram in West Bengal, election commission officials stressed that all affected voters were provided adequate administrative windows and legal opportunities to contest their exclusions, firmly denying any institutional bias in the data cleansing exercise.
