The Bombay high court at Goa on Thursday ordered the Election Commission of India (ECI) to restore within 10 days six names struck off during the special intensive revision in the coastal state, also raising questions about the poll panel’s insistence on Form 6 and its decision to freeze systems during the contentious exercise.
Paresh Salgaonkar and five other members of his family – residents of Santa Cruz constituency in Goa – alleged that they filled Form 8, which is used to change a voter’s address, during SIR in the state last year, received multiple confirmations and receipts, but were still deleted from the final rolls. Instead, they alleged, poll officials asked them to fill Form 6, used to enrol new voters.
The high court noted that the only reason given by the electoral registration officer in rejecting Form 8 was that “the ERONET was freezed during the process of enumeration and there was no mechanism for processing Form 8.”
“We reject any contention of the Election Commission that during the process of a Special Intensive Revision, the ERO is within the law to refuse giving effect to Form 8 whilst the revision is underway,” a two-judge bench held.
“Removal of a name of an elector from the revised roll, specially when they have already submitted Form 8 for shifting of residence within the same constituency, as has been done by the petitioners, and that too without affording them any hearing would amount to denial of the citizen’s right to vote,” the judges added.
{{/usCountry}}“Removal of a name of an elector from the revised roll, specially when they have already submitted Form 8 for shifting of residence within the same constituency, as has been done by the petitioners, and that too without affording them any hearing would amount to denial of the citizen’s right to vote,” the judges added.
{{/usCountry}}The judgment assumes significance because it confirms that certain software processes during SIR were frozen at different points in time – a contention at the heart of the swirling controversy around SIR and ECI following an Indian Express Investigation.
Moreover, the judgment comes days after the Supreme Court asked ECI not to require nearly 4.3 million Delhi residents – whose names were removed from the electoral rolls after they could not be found at their last known addresses – to reapply as new voters through Form 6 provided they were on the 2026 rolls. Instead, it suggested that such voters be permitted to restore their names through Form 8, which is intended for address-related changes, or through the enumeration process.
To be sure, ECI has continued suggesting the use of Form 6 in subsequent communications.
“We allow this petition… we issue a writ of mandamus and direct the ERO of Santa Cruz Constituency, to include the names of the petitioners in Part 25 of Santa Cruz constituency after confirming their residence, within a period of ten days from the passing of this order,” the bench of justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar said.
Goa chief electoral officer Sanjay Goel said his office will implement the high court’s order “if it can be implemented at our level.”
“We will first examine the order once it is available. Whatever the court has said we will implement if it can be implemented at our level. To the extent that we can implement it we will, if it can’t be done at our level, we will send it to ECI to have it implemented,” Goel said.
The family has voted in elections since 2002 but shifted within the same constituency before SIR was announced. They told the HC they asked the booth-level officer to serve them the SIR forms at the old address but the BLO refused, asking them instead to fill Form 8. ECI told the court the family refused to fill the partially filled SIR form, and instead filled Form 8.
The BLO uploaded the Form 8 on December 8, 2025 and provided an acknowledgment. But when the draft rolls were published on December 16, the names were missing. They approached poll officials, received confirmatory text messages on January 10, 2026, and were told it was forwarded to the ERO on January 17 – before the claims and objections period ended. But on January 21, they were told their Form 8 was rejected. Their names were missing from the final roll published on February 21 this year.
The court referred to a communication between the AERO and the district collector, saying the petitioners appeared before the ERO/AERO and were told to fill Form 6 as an objection to non-inclusion of name.
“These findings clearly point to the fact that Form 8 filed by the petitioners was rejected for only one reason: the system did not permit the ERO to even process it and pass orders, since it was freezed during the enumeration period. This would amount to suspension of the provisions of Rule 13 read with Section 22 of the Act and is impermissible,” the HC noted.
“The Form 8 has been correctly filed, as per reasons stated above it is not Form 6 that could be filed by the petitioners as they are not new voters. There is no valid reason for rejecting Form 8, as there appears to be no adverse report of the BLO after confirming the petitioners shifted residence in Part 25 of the Santa Cruz constituency. The Form 8 therefore must be held to be granted by the ERO,” the judges added.
The verdict also raised serious questions about the procedures during SIR, especially the freezing of systems.
“We also fail to understand how during an SIR, even assuming that the guidelines issued are to an extent to be followed by the EROs, there could be an insistence and freezing of the system, during the period kept for objections to the draft roll, that Form 8, correctly filed by the petitioners, would not be entertained,” the judges said.
Salgaonkar has refused to fill Form 6, saying that doing so would amount to filing a false declaration stating that he’s either a first-time voter or shifted from another constituency. Neither of the two mandatory options was applicable in his case.
It was a contention that the judges agreed with.
“Having considered the specific declarations that are to be made by a new voter in contrast to those that are required to be made by a voter who is applying for shifting of residence, it would be quite obvious that if a voter shifting residence as in the case of the present petitioners, had filed an application in Form 6, they would not only be making a false declaration in their application for inclusion in an electoral roll for the first time, but would also be falsely declaring that their name was not included in any assembly constituency or parliamentary constituency in the past,” the judges held.
The HC also ruled that the deletion of the names without a hearing was done “without following the principles of natural justice or affording the petitioners a reasonable opportunity of being heard.”
“In terms of the mandate of the proviso to Section 22 was a before taking any action to delete the name of a person who has ceased to be ordinarily resident in the constituency or even otherwise not entitled to be registered to the roll, an endeavor shall be made by the ERO to give him a reasonable opportunity to show cause why the action proposed should not be taken in relation to him. The order of the ERO therefore has also been passed in contravention of these provisions,” the HC said.