City’s homeless fear deletion from electoral roll over lack of papers; BLOs cite hardships

With over 97% of Delhi’s voters having received enumeration forms under the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) say homeless voters are the hardest to verify, with many lacking documents, family records and fixed addresses required to complete the exercise. This has left the homeless worried that their names could be deleted from the electoral roll.

As part of the month-long door-to-door exercise, enumeration forms had been distributed to around 1.40 crore voters, or about 97% of Delhi’s electorate. But only 14.03 lakh forms had been digitised till Monday. Delhi’s electoral roll, frozen on June 16 before the exercise began, had around 1.45 crore voters. Ending on July 29, the enumeration drive will be followed by publication of draft rolls on August 5, and the final roll on October 7.