The Election Commission of India (EC) stripped the SIR declaration from its statutory enrollment form, Form 6, and re‑enrolled 35,000 voters in Goa’s electoral roll on May 24, 2026. Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel said the move followed a directive from EC officials Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, who had objected to the add‑on while CEC Gyanesh Kumar had ignored them.
The special intensive revision (SIR) exercise, carried out earlier this month, had trimmed the roll from 1,185,000 to 1,057,000, a net loss of 128,000 names. Of those, 100,042 were flagged under the ASDD (Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate) category, 25,574 declared dead and 40,469 permanently shifted. The EC had initially added a SIR declaration box to Form 6, a move that now feels like a bureaucratic misstep.
A Bombay High Court bench, Justice Amit S. Jamsandekar and Justice Valmiki Menezes, questioned the EC’s process after a petition from six members of a family whose names were erased. The court warned that the draft roll cannot be the basis for deletion and that Form 6, 7 and 8 exist expressly for new, lost or relocated voters.
The EC justified its earlier decision by citing “normal deliberations” and a unanimous outcome, but critics argue the reversal was a concession to legal pressure. Voters who were removed from the roll now have the opportunity to file petitions, and the court will take up the case in the coming weeks.
The incident underscores the fragility of voter rolls in the run‑up to the next national elections, where even a single error can disenfranchise thousands. As the EC works to reconcile the roll, the next deadline for voter verification will likely be set by the Election Commission before the election schedule is finalized.