Re-verification of 47.6 lakh voter entries removed from draft electoral rolls during the ongoing special intensive revision is now under way in Delhi, after the Election Commission directed states and union territories to take up the matter. By the time draft rolls were published on 31 August, the number of names listed had fallen to 97.5 lakh — a notable drop from the 1.4 crore entries counted at the start of the exercise in June.
About 47.6 lakh people — accounting for roughly 32.8 per cent of all registered voters — had their names removed from electoral rolls after enumerators were unable to reach them at home during door-to-door verification, leading to their classification under the absent, shifted, dead, or duplicate categories. Conducted on a door-by-door basis, the verification effort that got underway on 30 June ran for close to seven weeks.
A separate group of roughly 33 lakh people whose names appeared in the preliminary electoral rolls has received official notices citing irregularities found 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 Summary Intensive Revision process, Delhi's chief electoral officer Ashok Kumar noted, adding that the ongoing re-verification drive across all 70 constituencies is intended to protect eligible voters from being left off the final electoral lists, due for publication on 4 December.
Those whose names were removed from electoral rolls in error are required to submit Form 6 to have their registration reinstated, an official noted. Forms are to be filed no later than 30 October. Guidance has gone out instructing personnel to process applications even when small inaccuracies appear in personal information, rather than turning them away on those grounds.
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. Discrepancies in the draft electoral rolls — including registered voters incorrectly flagged as deceased and others wrongly recorded as having changed their address — prompted authorities to direct Booth Level Officers to look into affected cases alongside their existing work of addressing notices tied to record inconsistencies, according to an official statement.
Out of the 33 lakh voters who received notices over registration discrepancies, election officials have now completed checks on roughly 25 lakh of those cases. Roughly 19 lakh entries drew scrutiny under a "logical discrepancies" label — covering name variations, age-related inconsistencies, and gaps in household particulars — while a separate tally of close to 14 lakh records fell into the "unmapped" category, meaning no traceable link to the 2002 SIR could be established for them.
A deadline of 30 October has been set for election officials to clear all outstanding notices. In a post published on X, the office of Delhi's chief electoral officer indicated that an outreach effort had been put in place to address the discrepancies that had come up in voter data. Of the 33 lakh total cases on record, roughly 20 lakh have been brought to a close.
Those with a grievance are welcome to bring it forward through any of the 14,947 Booth Level Officers, 902 Assistant Electoral Registration Officers, 70 Electoral Registration Officers, 13 District Electoral Officers, or the Chief Electoral Officer. Holders of SIR notices face a verification deadline of 30 November, by which point all outstanding checks are to be completed. Where electoral records left gaps that prevented matching voters to prior rolls, Booth Level Officers were directed to resolve those outstanding entries without delay, verifying the required documentation before closing each case.