Chief Electoral Officer, Uttar Pradesh, ordered legal action after irregularities were found in 10,470 Pilibhit electoral roll entries
An FIR was filed against two Electoral Registration Officers and a computer assistant at the constituency’s Voter Registration Centre
The inquiry traced the issue to Form 8 correction entries and found no physical forms or supporting records for 13,779 applications
Irregularities have been found in 10,470 entries in the electoral roll for the Pilibhit Assembly constituency, prompting the Chief Electoral Officer, Uttar Pradesh, to order legal action against two Electoral Registration Officers and terminate the services of a computer assistant at the constituency’s Voter Registration Centre.
An FIR has also been filed against the three by the Assistant District Election Officer. The action follows complaints that different names were appearing against Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers after the Special Intensive Revision in Uttar Pradesh, according to the Chief Electoral Officer’s statement.
The case matters because Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are only months away and the complaints relate to the final electoral roll published on April 10, 2026. The inquiry has now widened beyond the approved correction entries to fresh scrutiny of additions and deletions handled by the same computer assistant.
How The Irregularities Emerged
The inquiry traced the issue to Form 8 entries.
According to the Chief Electoral Officer’s statement, an inquiry report submitted by the Pilibhit District Election Officer found that the computer assistant entered 13,779 Form 8 applications for corrections to voter details between May 31 and August 29, 2026. No physical forms or supporting records linked to these entries were available in the office.
Officials cleared 10,470 of the 13,779 correction requests. The inquiry found irregularities in every one of those approved entries, the statement said.
Officials said they were moving to correct every Form 8 entry found to be irregular. They also ordered departmental proceedings against both EROs and a separate inquiry into the role of Assistant Electoral Registration Officers.
Complaints And Checks
The scrutiny began after complaints over EPIC mismatches.
The Chief Electoral Officer had ordered an inquiry after complaints that names different from those in the final electoral roll published on April 10, 2026 were showing up against voters’ EPIC numbers after the Special Intensive Revision exercise in the state.
The Chief Electoral Officer has asked the Pilibhit District Election Officer to examine every Form 6 entry for adding names and every Form 7 entry for removing names that the computer assistant handled between April 10 and October 21. A full report is due by Friday.
Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa told Indian Express that the complaints were part of a Samajwadi Party memorandum submitted on October 19. “The matter concerning Pilibhit was mentioned on the third and fourth pages,” Rinwa said, adding that the CEO’s office was shut due to Dussehra till October 20 and the matter was taken up after that, with a report sought from the Pilibhit District Magistrate.
A separate complaint also came from advocate Faizan Ali Khan, who wrote to the Pilibhit district administration on October 14. Khan said that his name and his younger brother Farhan’s name were not appearing in electoral records despite being in the final voter roll after the Special Intensive Revision.
Khan, a resident of Awas Vikas Colony in Pilibhit, told Indian Express that he and Farhan had appeared before election authorities in response to an official notice and had submitted documents that were verified. He said in his complaint that when his EPIC number was checked, the name “Raees Ali” appeared, identified as “son/relative of Huzaib Ali”, though his father’s name is Mushfiq Ali Khan.
He added that against Farhan’s details, the name shown was “Gufran Aslam”, “son of Hamid Aslam”. Khan said no person by those names lived in his neighbourhood and alleged that fictitious names had been entered, which could deprive him and Farhan of their right to vote.
Khan wrote that the administration initially described the discrepancies as “a technical error”. He sought restoration of the correct details and an investigation into how the changes were made after the final roll had been published and the original documents verified. He also said the inquiry should cover Barkhera, Puranpur and Bisalpur.
Opposition Mobilisation And Response
The issue has now moved into party-level checks.
Local Congress leader Kumud Gangwar said he was alerted by advocate Rehan Ali, a resident of the Pilibhit seat, who found altered names against the EPIC numbers of his brother and sister. Gangwar also alleged that on the dates of revision shown on the website, no official revision exercise was conducted by the Election Commission of India.
Ali told Indian Express he found the discrepancies “by chance”, after overhearing a conversation between a voter and a computer operator and then checking his own family’s records. “I alerted my neighbours and others in my booth and found more anomalies. So I informed Gangwar, who is a friend,” Ali said.
Congress then expanded its checks. Gangwar said the party mobilised a team of 55 volunteers who checked entries booth by booth across the Pilibhit Assembly segment over several days, covering 3.48 lakh voters and identifying 13,150 entries with discrepancies. “We found that most of the changes were made late in the night or on holidays or Sundays,” Gangwar said.
Gangwar and Samajwadi Party leaders said most of the altered voters were Muslims. Census 2011 showed that roughly a quarter of Pilibhit district’s population is Muslim. Opposition parties argued that such mismatches could have led to these voters being disqualified at election time.
The seat has seen close contests before. In the 2022 Assembly polls, BJP’s Sanjay Singh Gangwar won Pilibhit by a margin of less than 7,000 votes, with the SP candidate second. In 2024, the BJP won the Pilibhit Lok Sabha seat by a margin of more than 1 lakh votes.
SP spokesperson Udaiveer Singh said the party believed the problem could extend beyond Pilibhit and would conduct similar checks in around 100 Assembly constituencies across Uttar Pradesh. “We are questioning how such changes could have been made after the SIR. In particular, names of Muslim voters have been changed,” Singh said.
Congress state president Aradhana Mishra said the party would issue a circular to all 75 District Congress Committees to “verify” electoral rolls in their areas. “We will also give a representation to the ECI at the state level,” Mishra said.
BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said the party believed in “the accuracy of electoral rolls” and that all political parties were responsible for scrutinising voter lists during the revision process. “All parties should participate in the process rather than remain inactive and blame the ECI later,” Tripathi said. “If someone deliberately made these changes, the matter should be investigated, and action taken against the officials found guilty.”
