A massive internal audit of the Special Intensive Registration (SIR) exercise undertaken across the State, which brought out severe data discrepancies, has prompted the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) to establish a sophisticated, multi-tiered election monitoring infrastructure to protect its electoral prospects.

As the last date of the enrolment of voters through the SIR exercise concluded this week, senior Congress functionaries, after a preliminary analysis of the available data shared by the Chief Electoral Officer, sounded worried over the critical vulnerabilities in the State’s electoral rolls, identifying approximately 74 lakh votes that lack complete field mapping and proper digitisation.

“The most concerning to ruling Congress is the 63 lakh anomalous records flagged for duplications, deceased individuals, or voters who have permanently left the State, translating to a staggering average variance of nearly 50,000 compromised votes per assembly constituency,” TPCC president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud told The Hindu on Wednesday.

He emphasised that this strategic threat is particularly concentrated across sixteen dense urban constituencies along Hyderabad’s Outer Ring Road belt, which collectively encompass more than 20 lakh votes. He said a crucial meeting on SIR would be held on Thursday where Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, TPCC chief, AICC in charge and all assembly and parliamentary in charges will participate to analyse the first phase of SIR exercise.

Mr. Mahesh Goud said: “The TPCC has mounted an unprecedented counter-mobilisation effort spearheaded directly by Chief Minister Revanth Reddy through multiple high-level virtual coordination meetings.” Ruling party leaders have voiced concern that parties like the BJP are actively exploiting these vulnerabilities to target decisive Christian and Muslim minority segments.

Congress sets up control room

To systematically clean the rolls and counter potential disenfranchisement, a state-of-the-art election control room has been made fully operational at Gandhi Bhavan — the party’s headquarters. “This central command unit manages a dedicated three-member liaison team that coordinates directly with the Election Commission of India to lodge formal complaints and rectify discrepancies in the draft voter lists,” Congress sources noted.

On the ground, the party has deployed an army of 34,000 well-educated Booth Level Agents equipped with direct mobile tracking tools across every single polling station in the State. This grassroots network operates under a strict hierarchy of command, feeding real-time digital tracking data through mandal presidents, district Congress committees, and designated parliamentary and assembly seat coordinators. While senior party leaders emphasise that citizens must take personal responsibility for filing the necessary regulatory forms to keep their records accurate, this massive organisational exercise ensures the party is aggressively tracking every single voter anomaly to safeguard the integrity of the democratic process.

BRS to hold special SIR meet today

Former MP and senior BRS leader B. Vinod Kumar, speaking to The Hindu, provided a detailed diagnostic of the data. He pointed to a significant socio-political shift in voter registration patterns, arguing that the apparent registry inflation is driven more by citizen behaviour and administrative realities than institutional manipulation. Highlighting specific demographic trends, Mr. Vinod Kumar noted that middle and lower-income tenants residing in rapidly growing urban centres like Karimnagar, Warangal and Mahabubnagar are deliberately maintaining or shifting their voter registrations back to their native villages.

“Because these families rely heavily on localised State welfare benefits, such as white ration cards and social security programs, they prefer to vote where their family roots and safety nets are secured, which naturally leads to high urban tenant turnover and an inflation of unfindable addresses in cities,” he added. Similarly, Mr. Vinod Kumar observed that thousands of white-collar information technology professionals working in Hyderabad’s tech hubs, including Serilingampally, Kukatpally and L.B. Nagar, are systematically keeping their votes registered in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, frequently travelling across State lines on weekends to maintain their native political footprint.

BJP State president N. Ramchander Rao dismissed Congress party alarms regarding voter registry discrepancies as a tactical move to trigger fear among minority communities and shield illegal vote banks. He maintained that the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is a transparent, constitutional process strictly mandated by the Election Commission of India (ECI). He accused the Congress of targeting the non-Telugu voters and lodging complaints to delete their names from the voters list. He also charged that the Congress and BRS were making efforts to help the AIMIM. He said the SIR process is not yet complete as the draft electoral list would be made public on August 17.

Published - August 12, 2026 07:06 pm IST