EC won’t accept Family Register Certificate for SIR, Telangana says will move court

Shabbir said that the ECI, responding to clarifications sought by the Telangana Chief Electoral Officer, stated that the FRC introduced on July 25, 2026, was based on particulars electronically retrieved 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 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 programs. Therefore, the underlying government database cannot simply be viewed with suspicion when the same state-authenticated information is used for electoral verification,” he added.

Shabbir further 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 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. At the same time, the new FRC would not qualify because its particulars were drawn from the Food Security Card database.

Examining implications

Shabbir 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.

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“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 added.

While the AIMIM has backed the Family Register Certificate (FRC), the BJP has opposed it. The Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) has maintained a distance from the controversy. AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said that poor people who do not have the necessary documents should not lose their right to vote, and hence considering the FRC is a must. However, BJP state president N Ramchander Rao accused the Congress and the AIMIM of using the FRC to make illegal immigrants, including Rohingyas and Bangladeshis, eligible to vote.

The draft electoral rolls for the Telangana SIR are scheduled to be published on August 17.