Published Aug 03, 2026 | 7:37 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 03, 2026 | 8:07 PM
SIR of electoral rolls.
Synopsis: The Telangana Voters Rights Forum (TVRF) has written an open letter to the state BJP unit defending the government’s newly launched Family Register Certificate, days after senior leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy asked the Election Commission of India not to accept it as a valid ID during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
The Telangana Voters Rights Forum (TVRF), a collective of civil society organisations and activists working on electoral rights, has written an open letter to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Telangana unit, questioning the party’s opposition to the state government’s new Family Register Certificate.
The letter follows an official request by BJP leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy to the Election Commission of India (ECI), asking it not to accept the certificate as valid proof of identity during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Telangana.
The TVRF has come out in support of the state government’s decision, saying the certificate would help residents, particularly women and long-settled migrants, who lack documents currently accepted by the ECI.
Telangana’s Revenue Department issued a Government Order on 25 July, constituting a state-wide Telangana Family Register, an electronic database populated from the Food Security Card (ration card) records maintained by the Civil Supplies Department.
Each family’s entry carries the ration card number, details of the head of family and other members, their relationship to each other, age, gender, Aadhaar number, and address.
Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka announced the rollout on 31 July, at a SIR awareness programme held at Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Praja Bhavan. He said residents could now obtain the certificate from MRO/ Tahsiladar offices and MeeSeva centres, describing it as a single official record that would spare families the trouble of assembling proof of their composition from multiple sources whenever a government body or private institution asked for it.
The Deputy CM pointed out that the state already held detailed household data gathered through welfare schemes such as ration cards, the Aarogyasri health cover, and subsidised fine rice distribution, that had now been consolidated into an accessible certificate.
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Telangana BJP president N Ramchander Rao has attacked the move, calling it an attempt to legalise votes by “Bangladeshi and Rohingya immigrants” during the SIR.
He argued that the certificate is not proof of a person’s citizenship, as it is generated based on ration card records. He called it a national security risk, claiming that several undocumented immigrants would be legitimised after they obtain it.
Rao accused the Congress government of “appeasement politics” and alleged that the three major parties in Telangana –Congress, BRS, and AIMIM– have been working to protect “illegal” vote banks.
Another BJP leader, Marri Shashidhar Reddy, submitted a representation to the Chief Election Commissioner on 28 July. He requested the ECI to direct all the District Election Officers and Electoral Registration Officers to reject the Family Register Certificate as a legitimate document during the electoral revision process.
Reddy criticised the state government for introducing a new form of identity proof after the SIR has begun, terming it as a move to undermine the sanctity of the process.
In its letter, TVRF notes that BJP governments in Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka have already introduced comparable family-based identity documents built on ration card data.
The letter points to Uttar Pradesh’s Parivar Pehchan Patra and the family ID cards Karnataka’s BJP government rolled out in 2019-20. It argues that Telangana is only extending an approach BJP-run states themselves pioneered.
“Who, in your view, are the unqualified?” the forum asks the BJP in its letter, adding that it has spent months tracking the difficulties voters face under the SIR.
Drawing on its own visits to the affected areas, the TVRF says it found many long-term residents, especially women, struggling to establish a link to the 2002 rolls or produce documents on the ECI’s accepted list.
“We have given several petitions to the government, conducted a public hearing, are running help desks and are closely watching the way the enumeration exercise is occurring in the state, ” said A Suneetha, a senior researcher and activist associated with the Forum.
“In our representations, we have demanded the issue of Permanent Resident Certificate and Family Registry Certificate for all those who do not have the 2002 link and most of the 11 documents considered valid by the ECI,” she added.
The letter also highlighted the contribution of migrant laboureres in building the state: labourers from Telangana villages who worked on Osmania University, migrant workers from Chhattisgarh who built HITEC City in the 1990s, workers from Uttar Pradesh working in comstruction sites, workers from Odisha employed in hotels, and Bihari labourers working in the state’s cattle sheds and rice mills.
It also points to Hindu women who married into the city decades ago and, because of patriarchal practice, hold no identity document beyond a ration card or Aadhaar card.
The letter poses four questions to the BJP:
The forum says it welcomes Telangana’s G.O. precisely because it recognises how difficult it is for women and elderly citizens across religious communities to produce the ECI’s preferred documents, and asks whether the BJP’s position effectively means the poor, women, and long-settled migrants without those eleven documents should be denied the vote.
The letter is signed by Padmaja Shah, retired Osmania University faculty member; Soumya Kidambi, social activist; Meera Sanghamitra of the National Alliance of People’s Movements; A Suneetha of All India Feminist Alliance, K Sajaya, an independent journalist; among other activists associated with TVRF.
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(Edited by Fayisa CA)
