New Delhi: Delhi High Court has dismissed a PIL alleging that Election Commission’s house-to-house enumeration process for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls could disenfranchise homeless people, observing that a mechanism already exists for enrolling electors without a fixed address.A bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said the petitioner’s apprehensions were unfounded and noted that the existing framework adequately provides for the inclusion of homeless persons in electoral rolls.Referring to extracts of the draft electoral roll placed on record, the court observed that homeless persons had been listed with details.“The extract of the draft electoral roll … clearly showing the category of homeless persons with their name, age, gender and photograph, and the house number as ‘0’, clearly demonstrates that the ECI is already implementing the process of inclusion of the homeless persons in the roll as provided in the manual during the SIR exercise,” the bench observed.“Accordingly, none of the prayers sought in the present petition deserves to be granted,” the court ruled.Dismissing the petition filed by Indu Prakash Singh, the court held that there was no “vacuum” in the existing mechanism and termed the allegations regarding exclusion of people displaced by demolition drives as “bald averments”.The court further noted that any elector excluded from the electoral roll due to demolition or relocation could apply for inclusion through Form 6 under Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.It also referred to the manual on electoral rolls, which provides that booth-level officers verify enrolment applications submitted by homeless persons by visiting the location where they ordinarily sleep.The petitioner had contended that Delhi has around three lakh homeless persons and that the SIR exercise, launched in May this year, posed a “structural barrier” to their enrolment.“The ongoing SIR exercise in Delhi, initiated under ECI Directive No. 23/2025-ERS (Vol. II) dated May 14, 2026, assumes that booth level officers (BLOs) will be able to physically locate voters at their recorded addresses. However, this puts people who are already homeless, or have been rendered homeless or displaced due to demolitions, at risk of being systematically excluded from the electoral process, violating their right to vote and potentially leading to questions over their citizenship,” the PIL had said.However, ECI submitted that specific provisions already exist for enrolling homeless persons and pavement dwellers who do not possess documentary proof of residence.
