SIR deletions: elector numbers in 1/3 of Delhi below poll turnout

Why in the News

In 24 of Delhi’s 70 Assembly constituencies, the draft roll produced by the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) now carries fewer electors than the number of people who actually voted in the February 2025 Assembly election. The 2025 election was conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) itself on a roll of 1.56 crore electors, of whom 94.9 lakh voted. Roughly 58.5 lakh names have been removed since, leaving 97.5 lakh electors in the draft roll. The tension is arithmetical before it is legal: an electoral roll smaller than the last verified turnout implies either migration on an implausible scale or deletions that have removed electors who remain ordinarily resident.

What is the Special Intensive Revision?

1. What it is: It is a house-to-house re-verification of the electoral roll, conducted in phases across States and Union Territories, that rebuilds the roll rather than amending it at the margins.
2. What an elector must do: The draft enumeration process requires electors to list their Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers and their eligibility to vote.
3. Status of the output: What is published at the end of enumeration is a draft roll, not the final roll, so time remains for additions.
4. Two routes to addition: Freshly eligible electors may be added, and electors erroneously deleted may seek restoration through claims and objections.

What do the Delhi numbers show, and how thin is the buffer?

1. The starting roll: The rolls carried 1.56 crore electors before the Delhi Assembly polls of February 2025, of whom 94.9 lakh voted.
2. Two rounds of culling: Close to 11 lakh electors were deleted before the SIR, and nearly 47.6 lakh more during the draft SIR phase, a total of over 58.5 lakh names.
3. What is left: The draft roll carries 97.5 lakh electors for the Union Territory.
4. The buffer that remains: The 94.9 lakh who voted are 97% of the draft roll, leaving a “buffer” of only about 2.6 lakh electors, or 2.6%, to account for every ordinary resident who did not vote.
5. The implied turnout: If every deletion since the Assembly polls is legitimate, the hypothetical turnout percentage on the draft roll works out to an implausible 97%.

Which constituencies were cut deepest?

1. The worst case: Tughlakabad’s draft roll carries 1,00,386 electors against 1,14,961 who actually voted in 2025, a shortfall of 14,575.
2. How many seats are affected: 24 constituencies show fewer electors than 2025 turnout, and 15 of them carry the largest shortfalls. Eg. Sangam Vihar with 1,25,723 actual voters, Badli with 1,50,889 and Dwarka with 1,39,564.
3. Where they cluster: The pattern is most pronounced in the eastern, central and southern parts of Delhi, and is highest in the seats beyond the Yamuna on the east.

What would have to be true for the deletions to hold?

1. Universal turnout among residents: Everyone deemed an “ordinary resident” in these 24 constituencies would have to have voted in 2025.
2. Mass departure of voters: A significant share of those who did vote would have to have left the constituency since.
3. Non-voters never resident: Those who did not vote in 2025 would have to have been non-resident then, or to have ceased to be resident since.
4. Migration on an implausible scale: Taken together, these constituencies would have to have seen inward and outward migration of enormous scale in the 17 months between the polls and the start of the SIR, and there are no signs any of that happened.
5. Self-declared ineligibility: Since enumeration requires electors to state their EPIC number and their eligibility, it stretches reason to assume recent voters declared themselves ineligible.

Does the pattern extend beyond Delhi?

1. Buffer shrinks by phase: The practice of leaving a small buffer of electors is more marked for States and Union Territories revised in Phase 3 of the SIR than in the earlier phases.
2. Phase 3 figures: Andhra Pradesh retains a buffer of 8.8%, Karnataka 13.1% and Maharashtra 16.2%.
3. Delhi as the outlier: Delhi’s 2.6% buffer is the narrowest recorded, making it the worst case of the phase.
4. What a narrow buffer indicates: A thin buffer points to aggressive deletion and to the potential disenfranchisement of eligible electors, since it leaves almost no room for residents who simply did not vote.

Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

1. Burden of proof shifted to the elector: A citizen already on a roll used for a completed election must re-establish eligibility or lose the vote. Eg. Delhi’s draft roll dropped 58.5 lakh names from a roll the Commission itself used in February 2025.
   The Fix: Require a recorded, individually served reason for every deletion, with the elector’s response window running from the date of service rather than from publication of the draft.
2. Compressed timelines: Phase-wise revision on short schedules leaves little time for claims and objections to be heard on their merits. Eg. The buffer narrowed steadily from Phase 1 to Phase 3, with Delhi the narrowest at 2.6%.
   The Fix: Fix a minimum claims-and-objections period proportionate to the number of deletions in a constituency rather than a uniform calendar window.
3. No published audit of deletion grounds: Aggregate deletion counts are released without a category-wise break-up of death, shifting or duplication. Eg. Delhi’s 58.5 lakh removals are reported as a pre-SIR figure and an SIR-phase figure with no stated ground-wise split.
   The Fix: Publish constituency-level deletion data disaggregated by statutory ground, so the roll can be audited against civil registration and migration records.
4. Weak field verification capacity: Booth level officers handle large workloads within short revision cycles, so verification quality varies across constituencies. Eg. Deletions clustered in the eastern, central and southern parts of Delhi rather than spreading evenly.
   The Fix: Mandate supervisory re-verification of a random sample of deletions in every constituency before the draft roll is published.
5. Contested scope of the exercise: Whether the revision may examine questions beyond ordinary residence is disputed and unsettled. Eg. The enumeration form requires electors to state both their EPIC number and their eligibility.
   The Fix: Issue a public instruction confining the Commission’s enquiry to the statutory grounds for inclusion and deletion under the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

Conclusion

A roll smaller than the last verified turnout is not evidence of one wrong deletion; it is evidence that the method that produced it needs auditing. The draft stage still allows both freshly eligible electors and wrongly deleted ones to be added, so the number that matters is the final roll and not this one. The measure to watch is the size of the buffer in Delhi’s final roll against the 2.6% the draft leaves, and whether the Phase 3 States now revising show the same narrowing.

Back2Basics: Electoral Photo Identity Card

1. What it is: A photo identity document issued by the Election Commission of India to a registered elector, carrying a unique EPIC number.
2. When it began: Issue of the card started in 1993 to reduce impersonation and duplicate entries in electoral rolls.
3. What it does not prove: It is proof of enrolment on a roll and is not proof of citizenship or of residence in itself.
4. Use in this revision: The SIR enumeration form is keyed to the EPIC number, which is how an existing elector is matched to the rebuilt roll.

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?”