Pune: Over two lakh voters earlier shown as 126 years old in Maharashtra’s draft electoral roll would not have to fill up Form 8 to correct their age as the anomaly had been rectified, the state chief electoral officer’s office said on Friday.The chief poll officer’s office and its technical team traced the error to a glitch while processing data from the previous electoral roll. The system had read the birth year of a large number of voters as 1900, making their age appear as 126 in 2026.“Voters whose age was shown as 126 because of the technical issue will not have to submit Form 8. The records have been identified and corrected using the previous electoral data,” a senior official of the state’s chief electoral office said, days ahead of the Oct 12 deadline for claims and objections under the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise.TOI had highlighted the issue of the age glitch in the state’s draft electoral roll in its Sept 2, 2026, edition.Election officials said the affected electors were being contacted through booth-level officers (BLOs) and told to check their age on the draft roll after correction. “They are now being advised to check if the entry has been corrected in the draft roll before submitting Form 8,” the election official said.A source in the chief electoral officer’s office said the affected records were identified by comparing the draft roll entries with the previous electoral roll data to ensure that voters were not forced to file fresh applications for an error that originated in the data processing. “The clarification on the age anomaly rectification will ease pressure on BLOs, flooded with queries on name inclusion, deletion and corrections before the Oct 12 deadline for claims and objections,” he said.The anomaly in age had added to the worry of voters, already struggling to understand the SIR process and the documentation needed during the claims and objections period. A Hadapsar resident, shocked to find her age recorded as 126, said, “I thought I would have to go through the entire correction process and submit Form 8 with supporting documents. I was worried with the deadline approaching. I am relieved now that the election office has identified the error. My age is reflecting correctly on the draft roll now.”Another voter said he had uploaded his birth certificate to rectify the error in his age. “The BLO just told me that it has been corrected,” he added.
