Delhi’s pre-SIR based on 2002 rolls sparks fears of mass voter deletions
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New Delhi: The Election Commission’s plan to base the upcoming Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Delhi’s electoral rolls on the 2002 voter list has triggered anxiety among residents, many of whom worry their names could be removed.
Officials explained that the exercise will be anchored in the rolls last prepared during the 2002 SIR. At that time, Delhi had 84.4 lakh registered voters, including 47.5 lakh men and 36.9 lakh women. The present rolls for the 2025 Assembly polls list 1.56 crore voters—an 85 per cent increase—with the number of women voters nearly doubling over the two decades.
The main concern is for individuals whose parents were not included in the 2002 list. Authorities said that if someone’s name appears in both the 2002 and 2025 rolls, they would simply need to submit a copy of the older record with their form. If their own name is missing but a parent’s entry exists in the 2002 list, they would be required to provide proof of identity, the application form, and the parent’s record, Indian Express reported.
Voters whose parents are also absent from the 2002 rolls, however, would be subject to extra verification, according to the Delhi Election Office, TNIE reported.
The Election Commission has specified 12 acceptable identity documents for voters to establish eligibility. Booth-level officers have been deployed in every constituency, and a fresh constituency map has been drawn up using the 2002 Assembly boundaries.
Despite these measures, uncertainty continues to trouble residents. A Laxmi Nagar voter, Saksham Paswan, said he was unsure how he and his father would prove their residency since neither of their names appears in the 2002 list—his father, a migrant worker, never had a Delhi voter ID, though he himself does.
The decision has already sparked political controversy. Delhi Congress president Devender Yadav accused the Commission of orchestrating the revision to mask what he described as the BJP’s conspiracy to steal votes and drive out the poor, slum dwellers and migrants. He also questioned the rationale of comparing the 2002 rolls, when Delhi’s population was 1.39 crore, with the 2025 rolls, which already record 1.55 crore registered voters.
Both the Aam Aadmi Party and the BJP have previously accused each other of manipulating voter rolls by inserting bogus names and striking off genuine ones. Similar tensions have been reported in Bihar, where the 2003 list has been taken as the cutoff for an ongoing revision.