Overview
- The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka, published the draft electoral roll on August 24 showing 1,07,96,339 electors flagged as ASDDO, a category that stands for Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead or Other and accounts for about 19.48% of the previous roll.
- Authorities must serve 43.80 lakh notices across Karnataka, with 24.05 lakh concentrated in Bengaluru, and hearings will be held by Electoral Registration Officers or Assistant EROs through October 22 before the final roll is published on October 27.
- Voters flagged ASDDO can submit Form 6 to seek inclusion, Form 6A for NRIs, Form 7 to object to inclusion, and Form 8 for corrections, but the ECI requires the elector to appear in person for hearings even if documents are uploaded via the QR-coded notice.
- In Telangana the SIR identified 92.8 lakh voters for notices but rollout is slow: about 15 lakh notices prepared and roughly 650 served so far, prompting parties to organise gram and ward sabhas to help voters check names and file remedies.
- Political parties have mobilised BLAs and volunteers to monitor serving and hearings, and officials report website crashes and printing delays as operational strains that critics say raise the risk of eligible voters being left off rolls and of altered outcomes in close seats.