Hyderabad: Notices flagged by artificial intelligence for anomalies in Telangana’s electoral rolls have reached even Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, chief electoral officer C Sudarshan Reddy said, as Hyderabad and its neighbouring districts struggle to clear a backlog that accounts for more than half the state’s undelivered notices.
According to the Times of India, Sudarshan Reddy said notices were issued wherever anomalies were detected, irrespective of an elector’s position. “I have got an anomaly notice, and I submitted documents for hearing,” he said, adding that AI tools were being used to identify basic anomalies in the data. A notice, he clarified, does not by itself establish that a voter is ineligible, only that a flagged discrepancy needs a response.
That flagging exercise has landed hardest on Hyderabad and its adjoining urban districts. Medchal-Malkajgiri, Rangareddy and Hyderabad together generated 38.9 lakh notices, or 41.9 percent of the state total, but are still sitting on 20.5 lakh undelivered notices between them, 51.5 percent of Telangana’s entire pending delivery workload.
Medchal-Malkajgiri is the worst-placed of the three, having delivered only 3.6 lakh of its 14 lakh notices, a rate of 26.2 percent. Rangareddy has delivered 50.3 percent and Hyderabad 67.7 percent. Within these districts, Quthbullapur carries the single largest constituency-level backlog at 2.6 lakh, followed by Serilingampally and Medchal at 2.1 lakh each, and Kukatpally and Uppal at 2 lakh each, five constituencies holding 27.5 percent of all undelivered notices statewide.
Elsewhere, Adilabad has the lowest delivery rate in Telangana at 12.7 percent, followed by Kukatpally at 20.4 percent and Suryapet and Thungathurthi at 23.4 percent each. Nagarkurnool is the outlier at the other end, having delivered 98.6 percent of its notices.
It’s this geography-driven backlog that has pushed Sudarshan Reddy to seek a two-to-three-week extension of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) deadline from the Election Commission (EC). “We are waiting for EC’s response,” he said, adding that the commission was likely to respond positively. The deadline has also been extended in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
Statewide, 92.8 lakh notices have been generated, of which 52.9 lakh, or 57 percent, have been delivered, leaving 39.9 lakh, or 43 percent, pending. At the prescribed daily delivery target of 2.3 lakh, clearing the backlog alone would take about 17 days. The claims and objections period, which opened after the draft roll was published on August 17, is currently set to close on September 16, with disposal of claims, objections and notices continuing until October 15.
Even where notices have been delivered, follow-up is lagging: hearings have been held in just 7.96 lakh of the 52.94 lakh delivered notices, about 15 percent. Data reviewed by the Times of India shows 36 lakh hearing dates have lapsed, along with 13,459 rescheduled hearing dates that lapsed as well. Separately, 3.41 lakh cases remain pending with district election officers (DEOs), including 42,306 pending for more than five days; Hyderabad alone accounts for 93,677 DEO-pending cases, of which only four have been marked verified, a gap officials have yet to explain.
A special campaign was held on September 5 and 6 to speed up notice delivery and clear other pending work. Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy has separately sought a four-week extension beyond Sept 16, along with three to four more weeks for electors to respond to notices, public readings of the draft rolls, and dedicated help desks in urban districts.
