- ECI’s equation of FRC with ration card needs reconsideration; govt will explore legal options to protect poor voters
Hyderabad, August 12: Advisor to the Telangana Government Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Wednesday said the State Government would seek legal opinion on the Election Commission of India’s decision not to accept the newly introduced Telangana Family Register Certificate (FRC) as a designated document during verification under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Reacting to the ECI’s clarification dated August 11, Shabbir Ali said the State Government respected the constitutional authority of the Election Commission, but the reasoning equating the FRC with a ration card required careful legal examination. He said the government would explore all legally permissible options to ensure that genuine voters, particularly poor and vulnerable sections, were not subjected to avoidable hardship during the SIR.
The ECI, responding to clarifications sought by the Telangana Chief Electoral Officer, said the FRC introduced under G.O.Ms. No. 172 dated July 25, 2026, was based on particulars electronically fetched from the Food Security Card database and could, therefore, only be treated as equivalent to a ration card. It consequently held that the new FRC could not be accepted as one of the designated documents for SIR verification.
Shabbir Ali said it was difficult to accept the proposition that information drawn from the Food Security Card database should lose its evidentiary value merely because its source was a ration card.
“Ration cards are not casual or private documents. They are issued by the government after a prescribed process and verification. The Centre and State governments themselves rely upon the ration card system to identify crores of beneficiaries and provide foodgrains under statutory food-security programmes. Therefore, the underlying government database cannot simply be viewed with suspicion when the same State-authenticated information is used for electoral verification,” he said.
He said there was also an important distinction between treating a ration card as conclusive proof of citizenship and considering government-verified records as supporting evidence during verification. “Nobody is suggesting that a ration card by itself should conclusively establish citizenship. The issue is whether authentic government records relating to a person’s family, identity and residence can be given appropriate evidentiary value along with other material available to the electoral authorities,” he said.
The Supreme Court, in its May 27, 2026 judgment upholding the Bihar SIR, recognised the Election Commission’s discretion in prescribing documents and evidentiary standards for electoral-roll verification. Shabbir Ali said the Telangana Government would therefore obtain expert legal opinion on the scope available within the existing constitutional and statutory framework to protect genuine electors facing documentation difficulties.
He pointed out that the ECI’s August 11 clarification itself distinguished between the new Family Register Certificate and the earlier Family Member Certificate issued under the Revenue Department’s 2013 memo. According to the ECI, the earlier certificate, which involved cross-checking of documents and local enquiry, could continue to be accepted during SIR verification, while the new FRC would not qualify because its particulars were drawn from the Food Security Card database.
Shabbir Ali said the government could examine the implications of this distinction while obtaining legal opinion, including whether additional verification or an appropriate certification mechanism could address the ECI’s concerns without imposing an excessive documentation burden on ordinary citizens.
“Our objective is very clear. No genuine voter should face exclusion merely because he or she is poor, elderly, has shifted residence, cannot locate decades-old records, or does not possess one particular document. Verification must certainly be rigorous, but it should also be practical, fair and accessible to ordinary people,” he said.
Shabbir Ali recalled that he had earlier submitted a representation to Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy proposing a Permanent Residence Certificate system on the Karnataka model to assist genuine residents facing documentation gaps during the SIR. He said the latest development reinforced the need to examine all constitutionally and legally permissible mechanisms through which genuine residents could establish their eligibility without unnecessary hardship.
He said Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s government was committed to protecting the interests of every eligible voter while fully respecting the constitutional role of the Election Commission.
“The Telangana Government will not seek any dilution of genuine verification. Our effort will be to find a legally sustainable solution that makes verification easier for genuine citizens, especially the poor, while fully preserving the integrity of the electoral rolls,” Shabbir Ali said. (eom)
