In India’s capital, Delhiites reduced to documents

Why in the News

Delhi’s electoral roll has fallen from 1.45 crore electors on 16 June 2026 to 97.5 lakh under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), with 47.6 lakh names marked Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate (ASDD) at the draft stage. More than a third of those who remain on the draft roll have been served notices and must now establish their eligibility at hearing centres. The revision was rolled out in 2025 ahead of the Bihar Assembly election to identify duplicate entries and remove the dead, the shifted and illegal migrants, and it has since covered 30 States and Union Territories, with over 13 crore names removed at the draft stage nationally. The tension the Delhi hearings expose is that an exercise designed to clean the roll requires an existing elector to re prove an entitlement the state has already recognised repeatedly, and that documentary burden falls hardest on the people least able to produce records reaching back to 2002.

What is the Special Intensive Revision?

1. Purpose: The SIR is an exercise to clean voter lists by identifying duplicate entries and removing the names of the dead, those who have moved from their registered address, and illegal migrants.
2. Origin: It was rolled out in 2025 immediately before the Bihar Assembly election and has since been extended to 30 of India’s States and Union Territories.
3. The mapping test: Electors are matched against the earlier SIR rolls, and a person whose own name or a relative’s name is not found on those rolls is recorded as unmapped.
4. Scale of removal: Over 13 crore names have been removed from voter lists nationally at the draft stage.

What do the Delhi numbers show?

1. Roll contraction: The roll fell from 1.45 crore on 16 June 2026 to 97.5 lakh.
2. ASDD exclusions: Around 47.6 lakh people were marked Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate as the recorded reason for exclusion at the draft stage.
3. Unmapped notices: More than 13.79 lakh people were served notices after being marked unmapped.
4. Logical discrepancies: Another 19.33 lakh were flagged for logical discrepancies, a category covering name mismatches and age related anomalies.
5. The calendar: Notices are to be disposed of by 29 October after documents are submitted online or at a hearing centre, and the final roll is to be published on 4 November.

Why have documents become the binding constraint?

1. Eleven prescribed proofs: The Election Commission of India prescribes eleven identity documents for the SIR, and many of those who attend hearings hold none of them.
2. Aadhaar is not sufficient on its own: The Election Commission’s Standard Operating Procedure for the SIR states that submitting only Aadhaar is not enough.
3. Certificates rejected on a missing field: A Class 12 certificate was refused at a Chandni Chowk centre because it did not carry a date of birth, and the elector’s Class 10 certificate had been destroyed in a house fire.
4. An unlisted document pressed into service: Electors at Rajouri Garden were asked for PAN cards. The Electoral Registration Officer’s stated position is that PAN is taken only as an additional date of birth proof where a listed document is absent or unsatisfactory, and that it is not mandatory.
5. Discretion filling the gap: The Assistant Electoral Registration Officer at the Chandni Chowk centre said no attendee on one day held the required documents, that officials were accepting whatever was brought from a Class 5 marksheet to a hospital discharge card, and that at least 50 people were still turned away daily for holding no valid document at all.

Where does the burden of the process actually fall?

1. Wage loss per visit: A daily wage earner at the Chandni Chowk centre lost a day’s earning of Rs 400 to Rs 500 to attend, with no other income for a household of three.
2. Repeat trips: The same attendee was sent home two kilometres for a bank passbook and then a further kilometre for photocopies, before waiting two hours without resolution.
3. Cumulative cost: One household had lost two days of wages and still faced the cost of an internet cafe and the corrections yet to be filed.
4. The online route is unknown or unusable: Most notice recipients did not know documents could be submitted online through the QR code printed on the notice, and an elector who attempted it was rejected by the system for lacking the right documents despite attaching what was listed.
5. Anomalies that are clerical in nature: One elector’s only recorded discrepancy was his father’s name spelled Mahaveer on his voter identity card against Mahavir on the record, which required a correction and a fresh hearing.

What has gone wrong on the administrative side?

1. Volume against capacity: Between 100 and 1,000 people attend each hearing location daily, around 500 cases are scheduled each day at the Rajouri Garden centre, and of 300 people scheduled on a given day only 120 to 130 cases are processed.
2. Slots that do not hold: Hearings run in three slots to 5 p.m., and electors in early slots wait into the evening, with some turned away and rescheduled without a hearing.
3. Notice generation outpacing service: 7,000 notices were generated at one centre covering 50 booths of Chandni Chowk, with Booth Level Officers still in the field serving them.
4. Training deficit at the base: A Booth Level Officer from North East Delhi said training was minimal, and the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer attributed the volume of notices to Booth Level Officers not having done the verification properly in the first place.
5. Scheduling errors: One elector was served a notice for a hearing on a date the same centre was hosting the UPSC and NDA entrance examination.
6. Access problems in both directions: Officers report households in bungalows not opening their doors, which pushes service onto WhatsApp, and women appointed from school teaching are required to conduct door to door verification.

What rights questions does the process raise?

1. Consent for phone numbers: Officials directed applicants to write mobile numbers on forms where the field was optional, which raises the question of whether voter identity records are being linked to phone numbers without consent.
2. Consent for photographs: A digital rights activist who was himself served a notice has questioned whether consent was taken for photographing electors at hearing centres, and plans to file an application under the Right to Information Act, 2005.
3. Conduct at the centre: An official at Rajouri Garden threatened to lodge a First Information Report against a woman who approached the dais to ask when she would be called, after she had waited for hours.

Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

1. The burden of proof is inverted: An existing elector must re establish an entitlement the state has already recognised, rather than the administration having to state a ground for removing the name. Eg. Electors in Delhi who had voted across several cycles received notices for a missing 2002 roll entry.
   The Fix: Require the registration officer to record a specific stated ground for each proposed deletion and disclose it to the elector before the hearing.
2. The document list excludes what the poor hold: Eleven prescribed proofs leave out the records most commonly held by informal workers, and the most widely held identity document does not count on its own. Eg. A school leaving certificate was refused for carrying no date of birth field.
   The Fix: Add a residual clause admitting any government issued record of age or residence, with the officer recording written reasons for any refusal.
3. Migrant electors fail the mapping test by design: A worker enrolled at the place of work has no relative on that place’s older roll, so the unmapped flag is triggered by migration itself rather than by ineligibility. Eg. The Election Commission demonstrated a remote voting machine prototype in 2023 precisely because domestic migrants lose their vote on moving.
   The Fix: Accept a verified entry from the roll of the elector’s district of origin as satisfying the mapping requirement.
4. Documentary proof of parentage edges into citizenship determination: A revision that turns on proving birth and descent approaches a citizenship test, which the Citizenship Act, 1955 assigns to a different authority. Eg. The National Register of Citizens exercise in Assam, published in 2019, excluded about 19 lakh people and left their status unresolved for years.
   The Fix: Confine the revision to identity and residence at the registered address, and route any citizenship doubt to the authority the Citizenship Act, 1955 names.

Conclusion

The dispute is no longer about whether a roll should be cleaned but about who carries the cost of proving it is clean. A process that treats an unmapped record as a presumption against the elector shifts that cost onto daily wage households that lose a day’s income for each hearing, while a clerical spelling difference and a missing date of birth field carry the same consequence as an absent claim. The two things that cannot both hold are a documentary standard set at 2002 level records and an electorate whose poorest members have never held such records. The disposal deadline of 29 October and the final roll on 4 November are the dates on which that is settled for Delhi.

Back2Basics: Booth Level Officer (BLO)

1. What the office is: A Booth Level Officer is the Election Commission’s grassroots functionary, responsible for the electoral roll of a single polling booth.
2. Appointment: BLOs are appointed by the Electoral Registration Officer under Section 13B(2) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the system was introduced by the Election Commission in 2006.
3. Who serves: The role is filled by local government or semi government staff, typically school teachers, anganwadi workers, patwaris and panchayat secretaries.
4. What the office does: House to house verification of electors, collection and scrutiny of enrolment, deletion and correction forms, and service of notices issued by the Electoral Registration Officer.

Matching Previous Year Question

“Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”