Published Oct 07, 2026 | 7:58 AM ⚊ Updated Oct 07, 2026 | 7:58 AM
The party put forth a dozen questions to the poll body after reports of bulk Form 7 filings in several constituencies across the State.
Synopsis: Advocate L Ravichander, appearing for the petitioners, asked the court to examine the entire SIR process, beyond the two petitioners’ cases. The senior counsel raised several questions about the ongoing electoral revision in Telangana, including the AI-generated notices, the lack of transparency in the hearing process, and the procedure’s impact on citizens’ constitutional rights.
The Telangana High Court on Monday, 5 October, briefly heard a petition filed by Hyderabad-based social activist SQ Masood and his brother, Syed Waheed Uddin, challenging the ECINet/ERONET software and the notices it generated during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Telangana.
A division bench of the acting Chief Justice P Sam Koshy and Justice Narsing Rao Nandikonda heard the case. The bench asked Election Commission of India (ECI)’s counsel why one petitioner was dropped from the electoral roll without notice, and what happened to another petitioner’s case after he attended the hearing process. The matter has been listed for 13 October.
Advocate L Ravichander, appearing for the petitioners, asked the court to examine the entire SIR process, beyond the two petitioners’ cases. The senior counsel raised several questions about the ongoing electoral revision in Telangana, including the AI-generated notices, the lack of transparency in the hearing process, and the procedure’s impact on citizens’ constitutional rights.
Also Read: ECI ignoring the law and starting ‘completely alien procedure’ in SIR
Counsel for the petitioners opened by citing remarks by Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, who had faulted the methodology as an attempt to create two kinds of citizens: “one with votes, one without votes”, and stressed the seriousness of the issue.
When the bench noted that the first petitioner, SQ Masood, had never received a notice and therefore had nothing to contest on that count, Ravichander said that was precisely why the petition took on the entire SIR process and not merely a notice.
ECI’s counsel said the remedy was to file Form 6 seeking inclusion, and that an order on an earlier plea by the petitioners had noted the availability of a statutory appeal against deletion.
Justice Koshy observed that a petitioner who was never issued a notice cannot know why his name was removed. ECI’s Counsel sought time to file a response.
Also Read: SC didn’t approve modified Form 6: CJI discredits EC’s claim
ECI’s counsel said the second petitioner, Syed Waheed Uddin, received a notice with a stated reason: a mismatch between his father’s name in the earlier roll and the current one.
The petitioner’s counsel said Waheed Uddin appeared on 15 September for the hearing, as required by the notice served to him. One official took his documents, photographed them and sent him away. He noted that electors who receive a notice can submit only documents, not an explanation, and receive no updates on subsequent proceedings.
The bench questioned the ECI about what followed after the petitioner had attended the hearing. Justice Koshy noted that the authorities must have decided on it and informed him. ECI’s counsel said she would take instructions on what was done after the hearing and whether it was communicated to him.
Also Read: Did algorithm flag voters without human verification?
Advocate Ravichander flagged the use of artificial intelligence in issuing notices to the electors.
“The first difficulty is I am subjecting myself to a process that screams of being unscientific. They go by an AI-generated format. I don’t think we can so automatically deal with something as fundamental as the right to vote,” he said.
Justice Koshy observed that the country leans heavily on technology and that verifying everything physically may be near-impossible. He, too, had received such a notice because his name was missing from the earlier roll, and had responded, the Justice shared. The bench also said it understood the worry of a voter finding his name missing on polling day.
“The genesis of the whole process is unscientific. It may be technical. It may be technology, but it is unscientific,” Counsel for the petitioners contended.
When the bench observed that bias would not be an issue with an automated system, Advocate Ravichander said it may be a better process, but argued that it is not recognised by law.
Pointing to the SIR process in West Bengal, Advocate Ravichander said 37,05,235 appeals were filed. He added that the ECI itself had told the Supreme Court that disposing of appeals in that one state would take 146 months, over 12 years.
“We don’t want an encore of that in our state. Instead, let them come up with a detailed counter. Let the court look at it beyond the scope of the first and second petitioner,” he argued. “This is not a time in our democracy to be nitpicking on the nuances of the writ petition. The whole system is going awry.”
He warned that settling only the two individual cases would send a stream of similar petitions to the court, and that the case raised larger questions that need adjudication.
The bench said it would take up the matter next week, and directed the ECI to clarify why the first petitioner was excluded from electoral rolls and what became of the second petitioner’s hearing.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
