Telangana Voters Face Frustration Over Non-Searchable Draft Electoral Roll PDFs

The release of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) draft electoral rolls in Telangana has triggered widespread frustration among citizens, with voters in localities like Domalguda criticising the Election Commission of India and the state Chief Electoral Officer for a cumbersome verification process.

The draft rolls were published on Monday following the completion of the SIR exercise. Instead of offering an accessible digital interface, the current system requires citizens to identify their Assembly constituency, polling station, and part number before downloading separate PDF files to check whether their names remain on the voter list.

Voters have reported that many of the downloaded files are image-based scans rather than text-searchable documents, disabling standard keyword search functions such as "Ctrl+F". In some discussions in Hyderabad, citizens noted having to convert the PDFs into text formats before being able to look up their names, particularly after polling station and part numbers were altered during the revision.

While the national voter portal provides an EPIC-based search option, that tool does not include the newly published draft rolls. A voter from Domalguda described the situation as an extraordinary failure of digital accessibility, pointing out that citizens were left anxious about their enrollment status after submitting forms.

Additional confusion has been caused by the publication of the Absent, Shifted, Dead, and Duplicate (ASDD) lists. Although election officials highlighted the need to re-verify these entries to prevent wrongful removals, the ASDD lists have been made available only in Telugu across the state, posing difficulties for non-Telugu readers.

Citizens have until September 16 to submit claims and objections regarding the draft electoral rolls.