For millions of people in Delhi, voting has never been merely about pressing a button on an EVM. It is a small ritual of citizenship — checking the voter slip, walking to the polling booth, standing in a queue with neighbours and returning home with a marked finger.
But for nearly 47.6 lakh people in the national capital, that familiar right has suddenly become a question mark.
Delhi SIR: When One in Three Voters Is Missing From the Draft Roll
The draft electoral roll published after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has excluded 32.78% of Delhi’s voters — almost one in every three names from the earlier list of around 1.45 crore electors. Delhi has recorded the highest percentage of deletions among the states and Union Territories covered in this phase.
Behind that percentage are people, not numbers.
There could be an elderly pensioner who has lived in the same neighbourhood for decades but was not at home when the Booth Level Officer arrived. There could be a tenant who works twelve hours a day and missed the verification exercise. A migrant worker may have travelled back to his village. A young couple may have shifted houses within Delhi but never imagined that moving a few kilometres could put their vote in doubt.
The Election Commission’s exercise categorised 43.32 lakh voters as permanently shifted or absent. Another 2.82 lakh were marked deceased, while around 1.41 lakh were identified as duplicates or enrolled at multiple places.
For the genuinely deceased or duplicate entries, cleaning the electoral roll is necessary. No democracy benefits from a bloated or inaccurate voter list.
But the real question begins with those who are alive, eligible and still living where they say they live — yet find their names missing.
When a Missing Name Becomes a Fight for the Right to Vote
For a daily-wage worker, a domestic worker, an elderly person or someone unfamiliar with online forms, proving that a name belongs on the electoral roll may not be a simple administrative exercise. It can mean finding documents, understanding forms, making repeated visits and spending a day’s wage.
The Election Commission has opened the claims and objections process until September 30, allowing excluded voters to seek inclusion.
But democracy should ideally not make citizens prove their existence after the state loses track of them.
In India’s national capital, where Parliament makes laws in the name of the people, nearly one in three voters now has to first make sure that the system still recognises them as a voter.
That is not merely a number worth debating.
It is 47 lakh individual stories waiting to be heard.
