About 47.6 lakh voter entries removed from draft electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision are being re-examined across Delhi, following a directive from the Election Commission to states and union territories to carry out the exercise.
When the draft rolls were made public on 31 August, a total of 97.5 lakh names appeared on them — down from the 1.4 crore recorded at the outset of the exercise in June. About 47.6 lakh people — representing just under a third of all registered voters — were removed from the rolls after enumerators could not reach them at their homes during the verification drive, leaving them categorised under the ASDD grouping of absent, shifted, dead, or duplicate.
The property-by-property verification effort, spanning close to seven weeks in total, got under way on 30 June. A separate group of roughly 33 lakh people whose names appeared in the preliminary electoral rolls received notices under the SIR process, citing unspecified irregularities in their registration details.
Booth-level officers will verify whether voters carrying the ASDD designation were improperly removed from the draft rolls produced under the Special Intensive Revision, Delhi's chief electoral officer Ashok Kumar explained, adding that the broader re-verification effort spanning all 70 constituencies is intended to protect the inclusion of eligible voters before the finalised list is released on 4 December.
Voters whose registrations were dropped from the rolls in error are required to file Form 6 to have their records restored, an official stated. Forms are to be submitted by 30 October. Guidance has gone out to processing staff that applications containing small inaccuracies in personal information are not to be turned away on that basis alone.
A written directive from the Election Commission, dated 29 September, called on states and union territories to mount a targeted campaign bringing unregistered eligible voters onto the electoral rolls. Errors in the draft electoral rolls — with certain living voters recorded as deceased and others flagged as having relocated despite remaining at their registered addresses — prompted authorities to act, and Booth Level Officers have since been directed to take up missing-voter cases alongside their existing work of resolving discrepancies in the rolls, according to an official statement.
Out of 33 lakh voters whose records drew discrepancy notices, election officials have worked through and cleared roughly 25 lakh cases. Roughly 19 lakh entries drew the label "logical discrepancies" — a category covering name mismatches, age-related inconsistencies, and divergences in household details — while a separate tally of nearly 14 lakh records earned the designation "unmapped" after database cross-referencing failed to connect them to the 2002 SIR. A deadline of 30 October has been set for election officials to work through all outstanding notices.
Delhi's chief electoral officer posted on X that a drive to address discrepancies had already been set in motion. Of the 33 lakh total cases on record, roughly 20 lakh have been brought to a close. Those with unresolved concerns are able to reach out to any of the 14,947 BLOs, 902 AEROs, 70 EROs, 13 DEOs, or the CEO for assistance.
The SIR notice disposal and verification process is continuing until 30 November. Where electoral records left no clear link to a voter's prior registration, Booth Level Officers were directed to resolve those outstanding entries by verifying the required documentation before closing each case.