A dispute over the Mumbadevi voter roll has emerged after Congress MLA Amin Patel alleged that nearly 40% of voters in the Mumbai constituency were placed in categories including permanently shifted, dead, untraceable or absent, duplicate and other reasons during the special intensive revision exercise. Patel has urged Maharashtra’s chief electoral officer to ensure that eligible voters are not excluded because of errors in data entry, processing or verification.
Patel raised the issue in a letter to Maharashtra chief electoral officer S Chockalingam, saying several residents had been wrongly placed in exclusion categories. He alleged that some voters whose forms had been accepted were later marked as dead, while others were unable to locate booth-level officers or did not receive clear guidance on Form 6, which is used to seek inclusion in the electoral roll.
The MLA also questioned how information collected during the verification exercise could be excluded from the draft roll. He said booth-level officers had visited voters and collected prescribed forms and details, making it difficult to explain why some of the same voters were subsequently missing from the draft list.
Chockalingam said he had not seen Patel’s letter but maintained that the categorisation was not specific to Mumbai or Maharashtra. He attributed the issue to urban mobility, saying around 40% of people across the country were not found at their original addresses during address and related verification. According to him, such voters were placed in five categories and their names were not included in the draft list, but they could apply through Form 6 for inclusion.
The issue is particularly significant in Mumbadevi, a densely populated and mixed-population constituency covering areas including Dongri, Nagpada and Kamathipura. Patel has represented the constituency since 2009. The dispute places attention on the practical difficulty of maintaining accurate electoral records in neighbourhoods where residents may move, remain temporarily absent or have documentation and address records that do not match.
Form 6 has also become a point of contention after a Supreme Court bench led by the Chief Justice rejected the Election Commission’s claim that the court had upheld the declaration attached to the form. The court clarified that it had not approved a modification to the declaration. State electoral officials have said they will accept Form 6 applications according to the prescribed procedure and in light of the court’s observations, with decisions subject to the final outcome of the proceedings.
In Maharashtra, officials said the enumeration exercise had been completed and voter details had been verified. Booth-level officers collected information and signatures from residents, while voters reported dead, shifted elsewhere, absent from their registered addresses or found to have duplicate entries in another area were excluded from the draft roll. Electoral officials have also asked public representatives to examine the published draft and flag missing or incorrect names.
The next step is for affected voters and public representatives to submit corrections and Form 6 applications under the prescribed procedure. Electoral authorities will decide those applications while the related court proceedings continue.
