NEW DELHI: Following a nudge from the Election Commission to states and UTs, Delhi election officials have begun re-verifying 47.6 lakh voters whose names were deleted from the draft electoral rolls published during the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR).The draft rolls published Aug 31 had 97.5 lakh names in all, against 1.4 crore at the start of the exercise in June. The 47.6 lakh voters, or 32.8% of the electorate, were struck off as their enumeration forms could not be collected during the house-to-house verification, and were therefore marked absent, shifted, dead, and duplicate (ASDD). The house-to-house verification drive beginning June 30 lasted nearly seven weeks.These voters are separate from 33 lakh voters whose names were included in the draft rolls, but have been served SIR notices over “discrepancies”.
The current re-verification exercise across Delhi’s 70 constituencies “is aimed at ensuring no genuine voter is excluded from the final rolls, scheduled to be published on Dec 4”, said Delhi chief electoral officer Ashok Kumar. “BLOs will check whether voters marked ASDD were wrongly deleted from the SIR draft rolls. Voters found to have been wrongly deleted will have to fill form 6 for inclusion,” said an official. The deadline for submitting the forms is Oct 30.Officials have also been directed not to reject applications outright over minor errors in personal details. The Election Commission, had in a written communication on Sept 29, asked states and UTs to carry out a special drive to include voters “left out” of the rolls.The move comes amid reports that some voters who are alive have been excluded as dead, while some who have not shifted from their registered addresses have been marked as having shifted. “BLOs have been instructed to verify the cases of voters missing from the draft rolls alongside their ongoing work related to resolving notices issued for discrepancies in electoral records,” said an official.Of 33 lakh voters served notices for discrepancies, around 25 lakh have been checked and verified by election officials. More than 19 lakh were flagged for “logical discrepancies”, including mismatches in names, age-related inconsistencies and differences in family details, while nearly 14 lakh were classified as “unmapped” because their records could not be linked to the 2002 SIR.An official said the election officials are targeting to resolve all the notices by Oct 30. The office of the chief electoral officer of Delhi, in a recent post on X, had said: “We had started a proactive campaign to resolve issues (discrepancies). By now around 20 lakh cases out of 33 lakh have been resolved. If any person has any grievance, please feel free to contact any of the 14,947 BLOs, 902 AEROs, 70 EROs, 13 DEOs or the CEO. No eligible voter will be excluded from the voter list.”The disposal of SIR notices and completion of verification, meanwhile, will continue until Nov 30. In cases where voters could not be mapped to the previous electoral rolls, BLOs have been asked to clear the cases promptly after taking and checking prescribed documents.
