Jairam Ramesh Accuses Election Commission Of 'Illegal' Form 6 Changes That Block Gen Z Voters

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Saturday accused the Election Commission of India of making an "illegal, unconstitutional" change to the Form 6 voter registration process that he said had created fresh hurdles for first-time, Gen Z voters trying to enrol on the electoral rolls.

What Changed In Form 6

Ramesh alleged that a new section had been quietly added to the online Form 6 asking applicants whether their parents or grandparents had been part of an earlier Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. He said this additional requirement was inserted without any official notification and without corresponding amendments to the underlying election rules, effectively creating a fresh documentation burden specifically for young, first-time applicants who would have no prior SIR record to point to.

He argued that the change disproportionately affected Gen Z voters, many of whom are registering for the first time this year and have no family history in a previous SIR round to cite, making the additional field a practical barrier rather than a routine verification step.

Commissioners Objected, Ramesh Says

According to Ramesh, two of the three members of the Election Commission, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had objected to the Form 6 change and sought its reversal to ensure that young and first-time voters would not be shut out of the registration process. He said Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had gone ahead with the change regardless, describing it as being pushed through despite internal dissent within the three-member panel.

The claim of internal friction within the Election Commission is not new; opposition parties have pointed to reported objections from the two commissioners on other SIR-related decisions in recent weeks as well. Ramesh's latest charge adds a specific, concrete allegation, tied to a particular form field, to that broader running dispute over how the Commission has managed the voter roll revision process this year.

EC Orders Late-Night Camps For Young Voters

The allegation came a day after the Election Commission itself directed field officers, late on Friday night, to organise special enrolment camps aimed specifically at young voters and to give the initiative wide publicity through social media channels. Ramesh seized on the timing of that order, arguing that the Commission was now scrambling to fix a problem of its own making after having made it "virtually impossible" for young voters to register through the disputed Form 6 change in the first place.

He framed the sequence of events, the quiet change to the form followed by a hurried directive for enrolment camps, as evidence that the Commission's own processes were not being applied consistently or transparently, and repeated Congress's broader demand for accountability from the Chief Election Commissioner over how the voter roll exercise has been conducted this year.

Why It Matters

Electoral roll integrity and access to registration have become a recurring flashpoint between the Congress-led opposition and the Election Commission in the run-up to future state elections, with young and first-time voters seen as a significant and growing bloc. Any perceived procedural obstacle to their enrolment carries outsized political weight, since Gen Z voters are widely viewed as a swing constituency that major parties are actively courting.

The Election Commission has not yet issued a detailed public response specifically addressing Ramesh's Form 6 allegation, though it has previously maintained that decisions taken during the SIR process were arrived at unanimously among all three commissioners. The dispute is likely to feature prominently in Parliament and in ongoing legal challenges to the SIR exercise in the coming weeks.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.