PoliticsElections
Delhi starts rechecking 47 lakh voters dropped from SIR draft rolls
Booth-level officers have been told to reverify every elector left out of the draft published on 31 August, after complaints that living voters at their own addresses were struck off.
Key points
- 47.56 lakh of Delhi's 1.45 crore voters were left out of the draft rolls.
- About 25 lakh of 33.12 lakh notice cases have been resolved; the rest are due by 30 October.
- Final electoral rolls for Delhi will be published on 4 December.
Election officials in Delhi have begun rechecking more than 47 lakh voters who were left out of the draft electoral rolls in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), Chief Electoral Officer Ashok Kumar said on Friday.
The draft rolls, published on 31 August, dropped 47.56 lakh of the capital’s 1.45 crore voters as ASDD cases, the shorthand for electors found absent, shifted, dead or duplicated. Complaints followed that some voters who were alive, and some still living at their registered addresses, had been struck off.
Booth-level officers across Delhi’s 70 Assembly constituencies “have been directed to reverify the voters whose names were not in the draft rolls”, Kumar said. They have also been told not to reject cases out of hand where a voter’s details contain minor errors.
A second, separate pile of cases is also being worked through. Of the 97.53 lakh voters who did make the draft rolls, 33.12 lakh were sent notices over what officials call logical discrepancies, such as mistakes in personal details or a failure to map the voter to the rolls of the last SIR in 2002. About 25 lakh of those cases have been settled, and Kumar said all of them would be resolved by 30 October.
The final rolls are due on 4 December. People whose names are missing from the draft can apply for inclusion using Form 6.
“Our efforts are to ensure that no genuine voter’s name is omitted in the final voter lists,” Kumar said.
The recheck comes as the SIR remains at the centre of the opposition’s campaign against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, whose resignation protesters in Delhi and other cities have been demanding for two weeks.