A day after the Indian Express investigation reported that 97 Goa voters found eligible by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) were left out of the final roll because of a missing rollback facility in the ECINET system, a Booth Level Officer (BLO) in Taleigao constituency reached out to three of the 97 – brothers Ayub, Sohaib and Yusuf – and gave them Form 6 on September 24 to enrol again as voters.

The following day, all three filled out and submitted the forms with the required documents; the BLO confirmed this to Newslaundry. They will now have to be added to the electoral roll through the fresh-registration process.

The Express report was published on September 23. That day, the Election Commission of India (ECI) issued a statement. While it was silent on Goa, local poll officials soon began moving to add these voters as new ones via Form 6. 

Newslaundry accessed a list of 61 Taleigao electors who were among the 97. Bento S Vas, the BLO for Part 3 of Taleigao, told Newslaundry that on September 24, the ERO instructed BLOs to visit these electors, give them Form 6 and register them as voters. The list was shared with BLOs on WhatsApp for this purpose.

On September 26, the Election Commission issued another statement, saying 81 of the 97 electors had submitted Form 6 applications for inclusion in the electoral roll. But it did not say when they had applied, or whether officials had initiated their re-enrolment before or after The Indian Express report.

As of October 1, 88 of these 97 voters had been added, according to the Goa Chief Electoral Officer on X. The post also said three had Portuguese passports and six were outside India. The Commission said it was making efforts to contact those currently outside the country.

Speaking to Newslaundry, Goa CEO Sanjay Goyle said that these voters had submitted Form 6 and that, based on their applications, their names were being added back to the electoral roll. 

Some of those asked to re-enrol object to being treated as new voters. “The EC has asked us to fill Form 6, but why should we apply as new voters?” said Paresh Salgaoncar, who petitioned the High Court of Bombay at Goa after his name and those of his family members were deleted. He said that those registered as new voters would be included only in the supplementary list, not the final electoral roll. 

A court asks what the glitch is

Hearing his petition on September 30, a division bench of Justices Amit S Jamsandekar and Valmiki Menezes of the High Court of Bombay at Goa sharply pulled up the Election Commission, observing that administrative software systems cannot supersede statutory electoral laws. Questioning how existing voters had arbitrarily become “new voters” just to accommodate an inflexible portal, the bench remarked: “What empowers you to delete without a hearing? Your officers were helpless and just decided to throw it on the system.” 

Demanding to know “what is the glitch” preventing officers from overriding the digital portal to correct legitimate entries, the court expressed concern over how many others might have suffered in silence, warning that if software rejections dictate roll revisions, “lakhs will go off the rolls.” 

The warning comes against a roll that has already shrunk. Goa’s special intensive revision (SIR) of its voter rolls began in November 2025 with 11,85,034 electors and ended with a final roll of 10,57,566, a net decrease of........

© newslaundry