Delhi's election authorities have set in motion a review of roughly 47.56 lakh names removed from the draft electoral rolls, after objections surfaced that voters registered at their current addresses were among those left off the list released on 31 August. Chief Electoral Officer Ashok Kumar outlined the purpose behind the exercise as ensuring every qualified voter is included in the electoral rolls before the December 4 publication date.

The voter-roll verification falls within a broader active programme — the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR — aimed at keeping electoral lists accurate and up to date. Ground-level electoral officers carrying the BLO designation have been directed to handle two parallel tasks: confirming the status of voters dropped from rolls after the enumeration stage, and addressing outstanding notices tied to names that appeared in the draft lists with conflicting or incomplete details.

Booth-level officers have been instructed to carry out fresh verification of voters whose names were absent from the draft rolls released following the enumeration phase, Kumar told reporters. He stated that every eligible voter's registration details would be reviewed to prevent omissions from the rolls ahead of the December 4 publication date, with field-level officers conducting door-to-door visits across all 70 of Delhi's Assembly constituencies to address discrepancies flagged in individual voter records.

As part of those field visits, officers are also reviewing applications from individuals whose names did not appear on the preliminary rolls. Voters whose names are absent from the draft rolls have the option of filing Form 6 to request inclusion in the final electoral list, Kumar noted. Boundary-level officers, he added, had been directed to treat small inaccuracies in personal details as insufficient grounds for an outright rejection of a case.

Of the 33.12 lakh notices flagged for logical discrepancies or mapping issues, roughly 25 lakh have been cleared, according to Kumar. Voters received the notices when their personal information contained inaccuracies, when their records failed to match any mapped entry, or when their names could not be traced back to the 2002 SIR electoral rolls. Kumar put forward a deadline of 30 October for clearing the backlog of 33.12 lakh pending notice cases.

That set of notices was distinct from the removal of approximately 47.56 lakh voters that had taken place at the enumeration stage. Roughly a third of Delhi's 1.45 crore registered voters — some 47.56 lakh people — did not appear on the draft rolls once the SIR enumeration phase concluded. Voter records falling into the absent, shifted, dead, or duplicate categories were grouped together under the ASDD classification.

When the draft rolls were released on 31 August, they recorded a total of 97.53 lakh registered voters on the electoral list. Among that group, roughly 33.12 lakh people had formal notices sent to them — either because their personal details contained internal inconsistencies or because their records could not be matched against the 2002 SIR rolls.