SIR notices: Hyderabad sees rush for Family Register Certificates

It is a single document that lists the details of an entire family.

Hyderabad: Residents of Hyderabad are rushing to MeeSeva to download copies of their Telangana Family Register Certificates ahead of notices over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Across the state, lakhs of people have applied for the certificate, which the government launched last month.

Six lakh seek certificate

According to a Times of India (TOI) report, around 5.97 lakh applications have been filed for Telangana Family Register Certificates, as it has been listed as one of the 12 documents listed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the SIR.

As per the report, so far, 3.15 lakh applications have been approved and 2,100 rejected. The remaining applications are still pending.

It is a single document that lists the details of an entire family. For each family unit, it carries a Family Register Identification Number, which is the same as the family’s ration card number, along with the name of the head of the family and every member, each member’s relationship to the head, age, date of birth, gender, Aadhaar number and the family’s present address.

The register is built on the Food Security Card (ration card) database maintained by the Civil Supplies Department. The tehsildar of the mandal in which the family’s address appears in that database is the authority who issues the certificate.

How does Telangana Family Register Certificate help for SIR notices?

During the notice period, which is set to begin in Telangana on August 17, the citizens will get notices seeking the relevant documents. The notices will be issued to two types of electors, viz., unmapped voters and voters with anomalies in data.

Those who failed to mention 2002 SIR details in the enumeration form will be termed ‘unmapped voters’. Such voters need to submit any of the following documents: Identity Card/Pension Payment Order issued to a regular employee/pensioner of any Central Government/State Government/PSU, Identity Card/Certificate/Document issued in India by Government/local authorities/Banks/Post Office/LIC/PSUs before 01.07.1987, birth certificate, Passport, Educational certificate, Permanent Residence Certificate, Forest Rights Certificate, caste certificate, National Register of Citizens (wherever it exists), Family Register, and land/house allotment certificate.

Those who were born before July 1, 1987, need to submit any of these documents for themselves.

Meanwhile, those who were born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, need to provide a document for themselves and a document for either of their parents.

Those born after December 2, 2004, need to submit a document for themselves and documents of both parents.

In such cases, the electors can submit the Telangana Family Register Certificates to reply to SIR notices in Hyderabad and across other districts of Telangana.

Anomaly notices

Another type of notice will be for those who submitted 2002 SIR list details in the enumeration form; however, anomalies were found in the data during verification.

For anomaly notices, voters are mandated to prove their relationship with the elector whose details were used for mapping in the 2002 SIR list by submitting prescribed documents.

During Phase 2 of the SIR, citizens were asked to submit any document.

As per Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa, to reply to logical discrepancy notices, voters can submit any document, not necessarily from the ECI-listed documents, to prove the relationship.

The same is also possible in the BLO app.

However, in Phase 3, the ECI has restricted the option by introducing a dropdown menu, as evidenced by the SIR notices received in other states during this phase. Now, voters may be asked to submit only one of the following documents to prove the relationship: birth certificate, matriculation/educational certificate, and passport.

Those who are mapped with their parents may be asked to provide any one of the above documents themselves.

For mapping with maternal grandparents, electors may be asked to provide any one of the above-listed documents of their own and their mother’s. For mapping with paternal grandparents, they may be asked to provide any one of the above-listed documents of their own and their father’s.