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The bench said rejecting Form 8 meant the person concerned’s name would not appear on the electoral roll and expressed reservations about the process.
The court was hearing a writ petition filed by six members of a family, including Paresh Salgaonkar, whose names were deleted from the voters’ list after they shifted to a new house. (Credits: Bombay High Court)
The Bombay High Court’s Goa bench on Thursday questioned the Election Commission of India (ECI) over the rejection of Form 8 applications during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, observing that such action could result in eligible voters being left out of the rolls.
The court was hearing a writ petition filed by six members of a family, including Paresh Salgaonkar, whose names were deleted from the voters’ list after they shifted to a new house within the same Santa Cruz assembly constituency.
The petitioners told the court that they had been instructed by the Booth Level Officer to submit Form 8 to change their address. However, their applications were rejected during processing after errors surfaced because no record of their Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) could be found.
‘Why Reject Form 8?’
The division bench of Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit S Jamsandekar questioned the ECI’s decision to reject the forms instead of keeping them pending until the SIR exercise was completed.
As reported by PTI, the bench said rejecting Form 8 meant the concerned person’s name would not appear on the electoral roll and expressed reservations about the process.
The court asked whether the ECI was empowered to reject Form 8 applications during SIR and suggested that such forms could instead be kept pending and dealt with after the electoral roll was finalised.
“Why should it reject Form 8, if it comes during that period (SIR), and that is what we are trying to understand,” the bench observed, according to PTI.
The court said the ECI’s endeavour should be to have as many eligible voters as possible on the electoral roll.
ECI’s Response
Advocate Gaurish Agni, appearing for the ECI, told the bench that the commission had the power to reject the forms and that during SIR, the enumeration form was the basis for the exercise.
He said the petitioners’ Form 8 applications were rejected because they had not been submitted during the enumeration period.
Agni further said that if a person was left out during SIR, they could submit Form 6, which would be considered by the ECI. He also argued that the petitioners had approached the commission at the wrong stage with the wrong form.
The ECI counsel said the voter could even now approach the commission with Form 6 and inform it about having shifted to a new ward.
‘Object Cannot Be Overridden’
The bench, however, said the larger objective of the Representation of the People Act and the ECI was to ensure that citizens who are eligible to vote are able to cast their votes.
The court said the measures adopted by the commission should serve that objective and questioned whether rejecting an application from a voter who had approached the ECI with an incorrect form was preferable to keeping it pending.
“Because what happens is that if you don’t keep it pending, the person escapes from the roll. He will be neither here, nor there,” the bench observed.
The court also said that keeping such forms pending could provide the ECI with information about voters who had shifted residences.
Responding to the ECI’s argument that voters had a responsibility to intimate the commission before SIR, the bench questioned why such an exercise had been undertaken after 24 years and said regular updating could have prevented such situations.
The court clarified that the issue was not about assigning blame, but about ensuring that electoral rolls accurately reflected eligible voters.
The next hearing in the matter has been fixed for October 5.
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October 02, 2026, 09:19 IST
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