PANAJI: The Bombay High Court at Goa on Thursday ordered the Election Commission to restore to the electoral rolls the names of Paresh Salgaonkar and five members of his family, who were left out during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Goa, and refused the commission's plea for a stay so that it could move the Supreme Court.
Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar issued a mandamus directing the electoral registration officer of the Santa Cruz assembly constituency to include the petitioners' names, after confirming their residence, within 10 days. The bench had reserved its verdict on October 13 after four days of hearings; the writ petition, numbered 732 of 2026, was filed in September.
The Salgaonkars, residents of Santa Cruz in north Goa, challenged the removal of their names after their Form 8 application for a change of address was rejected. Their counsel, Vivek Rodrigues, said Salgaonkar had been on the rolls and voting since 1995 and was struck off because he had changed his residence within the same constituency.
The court turned down the commission's contention that the hearing be deferred because the validity of the SIR is pending before the Supreme Court. The plea did not challenge the SIR itself, the bench said. When commission counsel Gaurish Agni then sought a two-week stay, the court refused: "We decline to stay the directions given in this order since they pertain to the inclusion of petitioners as voters in the voting roll."
The case turned on the catch-22 facing voters who move house. The family said it shifted within the Santa Cruz constituency at least eight years ago, was told by the booth-level officer to file Form 8, and did so on December 2, 2025, two days before the enumeration deadline. The Form 8 was rejected on the last date for deciding objections, leaving no time to appeal, and the names were missing from the final roll published on February 21, 2026. Officials said the EPICs had been deleted and Form 8 could not be processed, and that the only route was Form 6, meant for fresh inclusion of new voters.
The bench held that Form 6 could not be forced on an existing elector who has merely changed address, because the pre-filled enumeration form carries a declaration that the voter continues to reside at the old address. "You cannot compel someone to make such a false declaration," the court said, asking why a relocated voter could not simply file Form 8, with Rule 12 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 available for objections.
Senior advocate Ashutosh Kumbhakoni, for the commission, argued that an intensive revision is prepared afresh under Rule 25(2) of the Registration of Electors Rules and that a name absent from the draft is a "non-inclusion", not a deletion. A voter omitted from the draft must file Form 6, with the prescribed declaration and documents, during the claims and objections period, he said.
Why it matters: this is the first High Court order after the Goa SIR directing the commission to put specific names back on the roll, and it comes in a week when the commission has been firefighting the fallout of deletions across states. Previously enrolled voters whose names are missing from draft SIR rolls can file Form 6 without fear of prosecution, the commission's Delhi office said this week. Opposition parties, including the INDIA bloc in Karnataka, protested against the SIR and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Thursday. The commission's core position, that non-inclusion in a de novo roll is not deletion, remains open before the Supreme Court.
The detailed order is awaited.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)