In Assam, ‘forged’ forms aimed at deleting thousands of Muslim voters ring alarm bells

On January 19, Sumona Rahman Choudhury and 14 other booth level officers in Assam’s Sribhumi district were called for a training session as part of the ongoing “special revision” of electoral rolls ahead of the Assembly elections this year.

The first draft of the state’s voter roll was published on December 27, after a door-to-door verification by booth level officers led to 10 lakh voter names being marked out for deletion. As is the norm, the Election Commission then invited claims and objections to further vet the draft roll for accuracy.

Any voter can file an objection if he believes someone has been wrongly included in the constituency’s electoral roll, using Form 7.

When Choudhary turned up for the session, she said that district officials handed her several objection forms, challenging the inclusion of 133 voters in her booth in Srimanta Kanishail village in Karimganj North assembly segment. The forms were “half-printed and half-handwritten”, she said.

All the objections had been filed by one person, who claimed that the 133 voters, all of them Muslims, had either permanently shifted from the village or were being enrolled twice.

But Choudhary, a teacher at the village government school, knew that to be false. “During the house-to-house enumeration, I found them at their residence and collected their signatures,” she said. “They have not shifted. They are genuine voters. The document of the Election commission that they signed is proof.”

Choudhary added: “Among the names was the headmaster of my school. Some of them are parents of my students. How could I ask them to come to a hearing to prove they are genuine voters?”

Who filed the objections?

Even more curiously, the list of 133 names included the complainant, Salim Ahmed, and his relatives. “This means Salim had filed an objection against his own inclusion,” Choudhary said.

She then called Ahmed to ask him if he had indeed filed the objections. “He denied it altogether,” she said. “He said he was not insane to have complained against himself, his brother and sister-in-law. ”

When Scroll contacted Ahmed, he had reached the Sribhumi district election office to file a complaint against the misuse of his name and voter identity card. “I have not filed any objections,” he said. “Do you think I will file a complaint seeking deletion of my own name?”

The Election Commission decided to exempt Assam, for now, from the controversial Special Intensive Revision that is being carried out in several states. But the ongoing special revision, which involves door-to-door verification of voters, has also led to widespread fears of disenfranchisement of minority voters – especially during the claims and objections process.

In several Muslim-majority districts and areas of Assam, bulk objections have been filed against voters, seeking to strike their names off the electoral roll. Thousands of voters are being called to hearings to prove that they are not dead or “permanently shifted” as the objections claim, triggering panic and anxiety among Bengal-origin Muslims.

As Choudhary discovered, the process is open to manipulation.

Scroll found six other instances in addition to Ahmed where people said their names, voter identity cards and phone numbers had been used without their consent or knowledge to file objections against hundreds of electors in several constituencies.

Complaints have been filed in several districts, alleging that voters were sought to be deleted in bulk in order to influence the electoral process. In Nagaon district, the hearing process has been suspended in three Assembly constituencies after complaints of fake Form 7 applications.

Any voter of an Assembly constituency can fill out a Form 7, seeking the deletion of names of other voters from the same constituency or raise an objection to their inclusion in the electoral rolls if they have died or if they have shifted out.

Videos have also emerged of Hindu voters, declaring that their names have been wrongfully used to seek deletion of other voters. The Lakhimpur and Morigaon district administrations have put out public notices, warning people from filing such dubious complaints.

Opposition parties and minority leaders have accused the BJP of pressuring the Election Commission officials to delete voters, especially Muslims. They pointed to recent statements by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma calling for “illegal Miyas” to be deleted from the voter list.

Miya Muslims is a pejorative term used for Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam, who are often vilified as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having roots in Assam that go back before Independence.

Similar allegations had surfaced in Karnataka’s Aland assembly constituency last year, where the names of 5,994 voters were sought to be deleted ahead of the 2023 state election through fake objection forms.

An FIR was registered on the alleged voter fraud based on a complaint filed by the Returning Officer. The police investigation revealed that a former Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Subhash Guttedar from Aland and his son Harshananda Guttedar allegedly hired a private firm to target voters and delete their names through forged Form 7s.

Scroll contacted the Election Commission, asking about allegations that there was a conspiracy to delete voters in bulk, and if forged Form 7 applications were being used for the purpose. The story will be updated if they respond.

‘One person filed over 100 objections’

A senior Election Commission official in Guwahati told Scroll that a voter can submit any number of such objections. “However, to prevent misuse of the process, if a person files more than five objections, an electoral registration officer will review the complaints individually,” the official said.

Once the Form 7 objections are filed, they are sent to BLOs for an on-ground verification, after which they are processed. However, in most cases, BLOs blindly accept the applications without verification and summon the voters for hearing, local political leaders told Scroll.

In Sribhumi, however, Choudhary and the other BLOs objected to the instructions from the district officials and the bulk objections. “In several cases, one person had filed over 100 forms,” Choudhary said.

She added: “We asked how we could initiate Form 7 against genuine voters. But the officials reiterated that we should go ahead.”

However, Choudhary stuck to her stance and returned the forms to the district election office.

Sribhumi district commissioner Pradeep Kumar Dwivedi, however, told Scroll that district officials were only following the procedure.

“It is the job of the BLO to verify whether an objection form is genuine or the objector authentic,” he said. “Based on that, they can summon people for hearing. Based on the outcome of the hearing, the ERO takes the decision. No name is deleted by bypassing the procedure. The process is being followed."

He added that even if a complaint has been filed with malafide intentions against legitimate voters, a hearing is necessary to establish the truth.

The scale of objections and summons has led several observers to draw parallels with the re-verification process during the process to update the National Register of Citizens in 2019, in which people were given – like with the special revision process – 24 hours to attend the hearings.

A senior Election Commission official quoted above told Scroll that about 56,000 objections have been rejected as of January 19. The claims and objections process had begun on December 27.

Advocate Masud Zaman claimed that election officials had told him that over 26,000 objections had been filed in five constituencies of Dhubri district, which is a Muslim-majority area.

The number was confirmed by Dhubri election officer Sugata Siddhartha Goswami. “Before calling people for a hearing, we will verify whether the forms are genuine or not,” Goswami said. “Both the objector and the person against whom the complaint has been filed will be called for hearing.”

Zaman pointed out that even if the complainants do not turn up or turn out to be fake, there is little redress for the voters being harassed. “I asked the election officials if legal action could be taken against those complainants who do not turn up. They had no reply.”