Report finds highest Telangana voter-notice rates in Hyderabad’s outer constituencies

Anomaly notices issued during Telangana’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls were most prevalent in several constituencies around Hyderabad, according to a report by the SABAR Institute and the Constitutional Guardians Forum. The report said the rate reached 66.6% in Quthbullapur, against a Telangana median of 28.7%. Other peripheral constituencies also recorded high proportions of electors receiving notices.

The reported rates were 65.4% in Kukatpally, 57% in Uppal, 56% in Medchal and 55.8% in Serilingampally. The analysis covered 9,285,255 notices from 36,169 polling stations across 119 constituencies. It said the overall data indicated that about one in three electors had received a notice.

The largest recorded category, accounting for 34.9% of notices, was “Unmapped with Last SIR”. The report described this as a failure to match a current record with the previous roll, rather than a defect in the elector’s own record. The report also examined the share of Muslim names associated with different reasons for notices.

Muslim names made up 50.5% of the 402,624 notices citing six or more children, compared with their 12.7% share of Telangana’s population in the 2011 Census, according to the report. They accounted for smaller shares in categories including parent-name mismatch and the “Unmapped with Last SIR” group. Sabir Ahamed, the report’s lead researcher, said the six-or-more-children category should be considered alongside the decline in Muslim fertility.

He said many people listed in that category belonged to an older generation and cited a national fertility rate of 2.36 from the National Family Health Survey. Within Hyderabad district, Secunderabad Cantonment had the highest notice rate among 15 constituencies, at 37.5%, followed by Secunderabad at 35.3% and Karwan at 34.8%. Nampally recorded the lowest rate, at 23.3%.

The report said the highest shares of Muslim names among notices in the district were recorded in Bahadurpura, Chandrayangutta, Charminar, Yakutpura and Nampally. It also noted that data for 184 of 36,353 polling stations was absent, with the missing stations concentrated in four constituencies, meaning their totals and notice rates were understated.