Mainstream WeeklyI did entertain some serious doubts about the efficacy of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of India’s electoral rolls when it began in Bihar. But I surmised, naively I now realise, that it would mostly affect the mass of poor who travel long distances for work and so would be “absent” when officials visit their homes.
This was until I began following news reports of mass purges from voters’ lists in state after state. The ugly truth hit home hard when my own name disappeared from Delhi’s electoral rolls, after having voted for decades, the last time during assembly elections in the capital in 2025.
It was when I returned home after a weekend at my daughter’s house that I learnt that a Booth Level Officer (BLO) had set up a camp the previous Sunday at a Delhi Municipal Corporation school facing my house – and I had missed it.
When I walked up to the school to know if the exercise would take place the next Sunday too, I was told that it was a one-day affair and that I should approach the Sub-Divisional Magistrate’s office a kilometre away.
The next day, armed with the voter identification (EPIC) cards of my wife and my own, I reached the office complex on Mehrauli-Badarpur Road where I found a small Election Commission office dedicated to the SIR process.
The all-female staffers in the main room were courteous and helpful.
After checking their computerised records, I was told that while my wife very much listed as a voter, my name was missing. I was stumped. I had become one of the estimated 47.5 lakhs in Delhi abruptly declared non-voters.
How’s that possible, I asked. I voted in last year’s Delhi Assembly elections (which the BJP won), using this very election ID card. How could my name go off the list suddenly?
For good measure, I added that although I became a voter immediately after qualifying for it, I started to vote only in 1993. I have rarely missed a vote since then.
One of the staffers, although equally mystified, reasoned that I may not have been at home when the BLO paid a visit.
But no official came to my house. If someone had come when I had stepped out, my wife would have telephoned me instantly or alerted me later.
In any case, can being away from the house be a valid reason to delete a voter’s name forever? If I had a full-time job, surely I would not be home six days a week. In any case, can’t we travel?
Also, how is it that my wife was still a voter while I was not – since no one had met either of us?
By now, a male colleague in the SIR unit joined us. He too was sympathetic to my plight.
Suddenly, to my luck, the officers found that my name was very much on the 2002 electoral list.
But there was a problem. The EPIC (voter identification card) no in 2002 was different from the one I had now. How?
I explained that I had lost the earlier card when my pocket was picked in 2010, that I had filed a complaint at the Sarojini Nagar Police station, and that the Election Commission subsequently issued me the card I now held.
I added that whenever parliamentary and assembly battles take place, we get slips from the election panel informing us about our polling station. We got these in my wife’s name and my name in 2025 too.
How could we get these slips if we were not registered voters? And if we voted until last year, how and why did my name vanish from the voters’ list now?
To remove their last doubt, I said we have lived in the present house since 1982.
The baffled but helpful SIR unit connected me to the local BLO. I was told to convey to the latter the 2002 EPIC no. According to them, that would put me back as a voter in Delhi. I followed their advice.
The next day, I met the BLO at the Residents Welfare Association (RWA) office near my house. My papers were ready, and I was politely told after verification – which did not take long — that all was well and that I could leave.
I patted myself on the back thinking this was a story which had ended on a positive note, thanks in part to a cooperative Election Commission staff.
But The Indian Express expose made me sit up. If junior officials have been systematically barred from accessing the Election Commission database, would my name get back into the voter rolls? Probably not, I reason. After all, being a voter in 2002 will not help me vote if I am missing from an existing list.
So, while the junior employees who helped me may be sincere, the real problem lay elsewhere. The Express scoop about the upheaval within the Election Commission makes me wonder if I will be able to vote when elections take place next.
I take heart from the fact that even VIP voters have been axed from official records. Compared to them, I am a nobody, except that my journalism has taken me innumerable times into the premises of the Election Commission, an institution that once commanded wide respect, even beyond India’s borders.
My SIR experience raises some disturbing questions.
First, who deleted my name (a question I am sure is being posed by millions of others too)? Since no official visited our house, who decided that my name should be dropped? Why?
I never got any official notice that my name was being/had been struck off, giving the reasons. Why was this done stealthily?
If I had not visited the SIR unit, I would have never suspected that I was no more a voter. My accidental trip helped me to re-discover my old EPIC number – which I certainly did not remember.
Why did the Election Commission find it necessary to axe my new EPIC card it itself had issued in 2010?
By now, I am convinced that this entire exercise, being done at breakneck speed, has a sinister side to it. Yes, we need to take off the names of the dead (my late parents included) but this is not as important as ensuring that even a genuine voter is not left out.
As far as I know, I am an existing voter, born and raised in Delhi, and very much a citizen of India. I still do not know why I was dropped from the electoral rolls. Can this be really called a fair and transparent electoral affair?