A people’s tribunal that audited Delhi’s Mangolpuri says hundreds of voters were excluded despite living at their registered addresses, and that no Booth Level Officer attended its hearing.
In Mangolpuri’s Y Block, 1,328 electors on the January 2025 roll appear in neither the draft Special Intensive Revision (SIR) roll nor the ASDD list (the list of voters marked absent, shifted, dead, or duplicate), with no reason recorded. This is according to an open letter to the Election Commission of India, published in full by The Wire on September 30. The letter, from a people’s tribunal that audited the SIR in the neighbourhood, says it found hundreds of cases where the official electoral record did not match the reality on the ground, and asks the Commission to verify the rolls in public.
The tribunal sat for a four-hour public hearing in Y Block on September 5. Its signatories include former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B. Lokur, writer Syeda Hameed, Safai Karamchari Andolan founder Bezwada Wilson, Annie Raja and Nisha Siddhu of the National Federation of Indian Women, Subhash Bhatnagar, Major General (Retd.) Anil Verma of the Association for Democratic Reforms, and Tara Rao, founder of Edellu Karnataka.
What the audit found
Of the 9,838 electors on the January 2025 roll, only 5,639 (57.3%) appear in the draft SIR roll, the tribunal says. A further 2,781 (28.3%) were placed on the ASDD list, and 1,328 (13.5%) appear in neither. It adds that 1,914 of those retained in the draft roll were also issued notices.
Before the hearing, citizen volunteers verified 1,448 of the block’s 1,516 houses across all eight polling booths. The tribunal says that this verification, together with the testimonies at the hearing, showed more than 450 people living at their addresses despite being placed on the ASDD list, and more than 500 who were present and still resident but listed nowhere. Many of the voters who testified, it says, had voted in the 2025 Delhi Assembly election and in earlier polls. They produced EPIC, Aadhaar, ration and PAN cards, and family members and neighbours corroborated their residence.
No officer attended
All eight Booth Level Officers were invited to the hearing. None attended or responded, the letter says. The tribunal points out that the Commission’s 2023 manual requires BLOs to hold ward sabha-level meetings, read out each part of the roll and begin corrections on the spot. None of this, it says, appears to have been done during the SIR. It sent its findings to the Commission and sought a meeting, but received no response.
What the tribunal wants
Among its seven demands, the tribunal has asked the Commission to:
• Order daily ward sabhas in Mangolpuri, where the draft roll, the ASDD list, and the notices are shared publicly, followed by time-bound corrections.
• Mandate similar village, ward, and booth-level meetings nationwide, with proceedings recorded and SIR changes confirmed only afterwards.
• Fix accountability on individual officers responsible for the wrongful deletion of voters.
• Revisit the SIR process, ensuring that enumeration remains the Commission’s core duty and no eligible voter is excluded merely because a form was not submitted.
• Remove the requirement of mapping voters to the 2002 roll.
• Recognise village- and ward-level public hearings as an integral part of roll verification and revision.
• Correct wrongful deletions on the initiative of the BLO and Electoral Registration Officer, without forcing voters to apply afresh through Form 6.
The Wire’s report carried no response from the Commission. The letter ends with a demand: “The voter list belongs to the people. Let the people verify it.”
Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap / The Hindu