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This is the first segment of a two-part series on the SIR process in Delhi. 

It maps the categories of cases Voter Adhikar Manch (VAM), a citizens’ collective has documented along with concerns raised by the collective that remain unaddressed by the Election Commission of India and the office of Chief Electoral Officer, Delhi.

The first phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in New Delhi began on June 30, 2026 and came to an end on August 17, 2026, after the enumeration deadline was extended twice. 

The enumeration phase was originally scheduled to end on July 29, it was first extended till August 8 first and then till August 17 which, under the first revision, was the date on which the draft roll was to be published. 

The SIR schedule was further revised on August 19. The publication date of the draft roll was changed to August 31. I reiterate these dates here, or rather, the change of these dates, to register the most mundane aspect of this process that led to careless discrepancies on the ground during the enumeration phase.

It is clear that even the institutions administering this process know how cumbersome it is, and that attempting to carry out this special “intensive” revision of rolls in a fair manner requires a diligent and systematic infrastructure. 

Also read: Election Commission’s Data on Bengal SIR Appeals Is Designed to Confuse. Here’s How.

With multiple revisions, and ineffective follow-ups with those revisions, the ECI and CEO-Delhi seem not to have accounted for how extensive this process is. Around 48 lakh people have been marked to be left out of the draft roll, and there is no “official” way to account for these exclusions. 

The electoral roll published on Monday (August 31) revealed that 47.7 lakh names out of the city’s 1.45 crore previously registered voters – 33% or one-third of the Union territory’s electorate – have been excluded as part of the revision.

We founded Voter Adhikar Manch (VAM) in Delhi after realising that all of us working on worker and migrant issues in Delhi were being approached by people asking how the process affects them and what they should do. 

Many anticipated being left out of the voter rolls. 

Over the last month with constant support from civil society groups, VAM has mapped the unconstitutional ways this exercise has been carried out. 

Despite the Delhi chief electoral officer (CEO)’s publicised claim that 100% SIR forms have been distributed, many voters with whom VAM interacted have claimed that they did not receive the SIR form at their registered address. 

First letter, July 26, 2026

We wrote our first representation to the ECI and CEO, Delhi on July 26 describing our concerns about the deletion of working-class, migrant and married women electors, the wrongful and arbitrary use of the “shifted”, “absent” and “uncollectable” markings and the routing of electors through Form 6 during the enumeration phase in Delhi. 

A critical concern that we immediately identified in the beginning of the phase was missing and uninformed Booth Level Officers (BLOs), which resulted in people being stranded to figure out hyper-technical processes of the SIR form.

While recognising how untrained BLOs have been trying to push through acute time pressure, inconsistent protocols and low pay for this work, there seemed to be no commitment towards streamlining the process to ensure that “no eligible citizen is left out…” (as the CEO, Delhi office, kept highlighting in its press notes, status reports and revised schedules). 

The VAM underlined that the administrative bodies have failed the electors they are administering by an underlying false assumption that renders the design of this process inaccessible to most electors. 

Many electors are illiterate, unable to understand self-mapping and progeny mapping that this process requires, without smartphones, signing or thumb-marking forms without knowing what details the enumeration forms require. People have been going to local cyber cafes and paying hefty amounts to get forms for their families filled, often incomplete. 

Many people somehow completed the process without the assistance that they were entitled to. We also identified that there were several electors who did not even get a chance to enter the first phase and were left out of it. 

Also read: 3,404 SIR Forms Found at Private Shop in Navi Mumbai; Five BLOs Suspended

While the 2025 voter roll for state assembly election is the base roll for deletions, there is ambiguity as to what exactly warrants exclusion. BLOs informed people that their forms could not be generated if their name was missing from the 2025 roll. 

Along with that, “monthly pooling” also determined who got their names deleted........

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