Telangana SIR: Over 60% SIR notices issued in Hyderabad periphery, below 35% in Hyderabad district

Assembly constituencies in the peripheral areas of Hyderabad such as Qutbullapur, Kukatpally, Uppal, Medchal and Serilingampally witnessed a high proportion of electors receiving anomaly notices, with the rate reaching as high as 66.6% in Quthbullapur against a Telangana median of 28.7%. The highest share of Muslim names among notices was recorded for the reason of having six or more children, at 50.5%.

According to a SABAR Institute and Constitutional Guardians Forum report that analysed Special Intensive Revision data — including 92,85,255 anomaly notices sent from 36,169 polling stations across 119 constituencies, leading to the larger conclusion that one in three electors had received notices — the anomaly notice rate was 66.6% in Quthbullapur, 65.4% in Kukatpally, 57% in Uppal, 56% in Medchal and 55.8% in Serilingampally.

According to the report, the reason recorded for the largest share of notices was “Unmapped with Last SIR”, which accounted for 34.9% of all notices. The report describes this as a matching failure against the previous roll rather than a defect in the elector’s own record.The report also found wide variation in the share of Muslim names by stated reason.

Muslim names accounted for 50.5% of the 4,02,624 notices citing six or more children, which according to the Election Commission of India is an anomaly, nearly four times their 12.7% share of Telangana’s population in the 2011 Census, the report notes. They accounted for 22.3% of notices citing a progeny age gap of less than nine months, 18.3% where the parent age difference was above 50 years and 16.7% in cases of self-name mismatch. The share was 14.8% for parent-name mismatch and 13.8% for parent-age difference below 15 years. By contrast, Muslim names accounted for 7.5% of “Unmapped with Last SIR” notices.

“While a little over 50% of the notices sent to voters with Muslim names were for progeny equal to or greater than six, we have to be cognisant of the fact that the Muslim total fertility rate has been steadily declining over the years. So those who are listed as having six or more siblings are not young. They are an older generation. National Family Health Survey shows the TFR as 2.36,” Sabir Ahamed who is the lead researcher at SABAR Institute said.

Constituencies in Hyderabad district also showed wide variation in the anomaly notice rate and the share of Muslim names among notices. Secunderabad Cantonment recorded the highest anomaly notice rate among the 15 constituencies at 37.5%, followed by Secunderabad at 35.3% and Karwan at 34.8%. Nampally had the lowest rate at 23.3%.

The Muslim-name share was highest in Bahadurpura at 85.18%, followed by Chandrayangutta at 71.15%, Charminar at 61.32%, Yakutpura at 61.16% and Nampally at 57.35%. The report also identified several polling stations in Karwan, Bahadurpura, Chandrayangutta, Yakutpura and Charminar among those with the highest absolute numbers of notices carrying Muslim names.

Among the 20 “heaviest polling” stations by total notices, Part 91 in Kukatpally had 1,061 notices, Part 235 in Quthbullapur had 1,057, Part 139 in Qutbullapur had 1,038 and Part 446 in Medchal had 1,031 and Part 182 had 1,008. The report said the median polling station carried 226 notices, while the 20 heaviest booths carried between 973 and 1,061 notices. All 20 were located in Medchal Malkajgiri or Rangareddy districts.

The report clarified that 184 of the 36,353 polling stations were absent from the published data, with the missing stations concentrated in Sathupalle, Kollapur, Vemulawada and Bhupalpalle. The report said the totals and notice rates of these four constituencies were therefore understated.