The change has been implemented on the ECINET application and portal and on the websites of the respective Chief Electoral Officers. The additional declaration remains available where the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, is still under way.
The Commission had decided at a meeting on September 26 that the declaration attached to Form 6 was specific to the SIR process. Its official statement said forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, would be used during non-SIR periods. The meeting was attended by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
Form 6 is the statutory application used by eligible citizens seeking inclusion in an electoral roll. During SIR, the additional declaration sought information connecting an applicant, or the applicant’s parents or grandparents, with electoral rolls prepared during an earlier intensive revision. Where the revision has finished, that separate requirement no longer accompanies the online enrolment process.
The administrative change draws a clearer distinction between the standard enrolment procedure and requirements applied specifically during an intensive revision. The Commission has maintained that Form 6 itself was not amended and that the declaration was an additional SIR-specific requirement.
Questions over the declaration had arisen within the Commission. Joshi had objected to changes concerning the statutory Form 6 on the ground that a form prescribed under the 1960 Rules could not be altered without an amendment to those rules. Sandhu concurred with that position. Sandhu subsequently objected when the SIR declaration was incorporated into the online Form 6 workflow on ECINET and sought its removal.
The Commission’s September 26 statement said the declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR had been upheld by the Supreme Court. It simultaneously clarified that the statutory forms under the 1960 Rules would apply outside an SIR period. The withdrawal from completed-SIR jurisdictions puts that distinction into effect on the digital registration system.
The change does not abolish the declaration across the country. Prospective voters in states and Union Territories where SIR remains in progress may still encounter the additional declaration as part of the enrolment process. The applicable requirement therefore depends on whether the intensive revision is continuing in the jurisdiction concerned.
The Commission has also ordered a review of ECINET, its digital election-management platform. A committee headed by a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner and including an independent expert from an IIT or IIIT has been tasked with checking that the system complies with electoral laws and rules and reporting to the Commission.
The September 26 decisions also addressed how officials should handle voters issued notices during an ongoing SIR because they were unmapped or had logical discrepancies in their records. Booth Level Officers are to visit such voters’ homes, collect documents and upload them to ECINET for decisions by Electoral Registration Officers. Personal hearings at ERO or Assistant ERO offices are not ordinarily required, with hearings in exceptional cases preferably conducted online.
District Election Officers were also directed to establish adequate help desks or special camps for people in night shelters, labourers, poorer residents and homeless people where required. These measures were announced as part of the same Commission meeting that clarified the status of the Form 6 declaration.
The Commission said field officers have role-based access to ECINET according to their statutory powers. It also decided that new initiatives involving information-technology modules and portals would be discussed in the Committee of Officers before receiving Commission approval.
For applicants in jurisdictions where SIR has ended, the immediate procedural position is simpler: an eligible person applying for fresh inclusion on the electoral roll uses Form 6 as prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. The separate SIR declaration is no longer displayed alongside that online application.
