At the Blind Relief Association campus in the New Delhi constituency, 10 voters who were added to the electoral roll in January 2025, a month before the assembly elections, have now been removed. The reason recorded for their deletion: “permanently shifted.”
They were residential students at the NGO, which runs a senior secondary school and a vocational training centre with skilling courses. David Absalom, the NGO’s executive secretary, said that ahead of the 2025 elections, the district administration had approached the organisation to hold a special camp for visually impaired students. Tejinder Singh Bisht, an administrative staff member, said the organisation had long been in discussions with poll officials.
The Election Commission’s own manual allows hostel students to register as voters and to qualify under the ordinarily resident clause, provided the course runs for at least a year and is recognised by a government, board or university.
But there were two reasons why these students were deleted: one, because most of them were now registered as voters outside Delhi, and two, their residential skilling course was already complete when the enumeration phase was still underway. They could not be reached for comment.
An analysis of the New Delhi constituency shows that voters added to the rolls in the two months before the February 2025 elections have been disproportionately removed in this year’s SIR draft. Of the 1,430 voters added in January 2025, 560 – nearly four in 10 – have been deleted. Of the 2,369 added in December 2024, 783, or roughly a third, have gone the same way.
The constituency – from where AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal lost with a thin margin to BJP’s Pravesh Verma in 2025 – had 1,08,788 electors during the assembly elections. The SIR removed 37,315 of them, a deletion rate of about 34.3 percent. Between January 2025 and June 2026, before the SIR even began, the constituency had already recorded 25,185 deletions against just 5,713 additions. Add the SIR’s own 37,315 removals, and the constituency has lost a total of 62,500 voters since the 2025 elections.
Between the 2025 assembly elections and the start of the SIR, 11.1 lakh voters were removed from the state’s rolls. The SIR itself deleted another 47.5 lakh. Together, that has taken Delhi’s electorate from 1.56 crore in February 2025 to 97.5 lakh by August 2026.
Those excluded in the draft rolls now hope to be added back before the final roll is published.
‘How will my name be added back now?’
Through Delhi’s narrow lanes stands a four-storey white building. On one of its floors, 63-year-old Girish Chandra Pal lives in a single room with his wife and two children. The room also doubles as storage space for clothes and other material related to his business.
It was around 7 pm when we met Pal. He was alone at home. Asked if he knew his name was not in the draft roll, he was surprised. “I came to know only after you told me.”
The names of his wife and both children were also deleted from the voter list. Pal and his family have been living in the same building for the last 20 years and in the same locality for 35 years. Pal’s name was added to the voter list in December 2024, two months before the assembly elections. Following the SIR, his name was removed with the reason marked “permanently shifted”.
“How will my name be added back now,” he asked.
Eleven voter cards, never collected
The voters registered in the New Delhi constituency in December 2024 and January 2025 and now removed are spread across the constituency – but of the January deletions alone, 173 are from Pillanji Village in Sarojini Nagar.
In January 2025, eight people were registered as voters at one address there – house number P-8, Pillanji Village, Sarojini Nagar: Arun Kumar, Raju Kumar, Chandresh, Rahul Rana, Raja, Pappu Singh, Ankit Bhan, Satyavir and Digapal Singh. All eight names have now been removed, with the reason marked “permanently shifted”. On checking the records, we found that one of them, Raja, had in fact moved from Delhi to Badaun in Uttar Pradesh.
Sunil Basoiya, the owner of the building, told Newslaundry that many more voters had been registered at his address ahead of the 2025 assembly elections than actually lived there. “Around 11 fake voters were registered at my address, and I have around 11 voter cards that the Election Commission delivered for these voters. All the voter cards that were delivered are still with me, no one came to collect them. I raised this issue with the AERO appointed at that time, who assured me that he would look into it, but nothing has changed,” he said.
Pillanji Village is densely populated and falls within the New Delhi constituency’s five polling booths, numbered 84 to 88 – all five of which BJP’s Pravesh Verma led over Arvind Kejriwal in 2025. At booth 84, Kejriwal received 325 votes against Verma’s 394; at booth 85, 202 to 277; at booth 86, 160 to 284; at booth 87, 179 to 325; and at booth 88, 107 to 214.
Responding to voters who complained that no BLO had visited their homes during the enumeration period and that they never received forms, BLO Madan Singh said Pillanji is a densely populated area where most residents are daily-wage workers. “We have gone to their houses, but most of the time they were not available at home. We gave forms to those we could reach. Those who filled them out were included in the electoral roll, while those who did not were marked with the appropriate reason in the ASDD list,” he said.
Singh said BLOs had done their part, but locating voters in the area was difficult. “We have our regular work to do along with the SIR. Finding voters is difficult in that locality. We have also contacted landlords to make this process easier,” he said.
A cleric who went to Bihar to prove his citizenship
Jamshed Alam, a cleric and resident of the Dargah Sayid Hussain area on Panchukiya Road in New Delhi, had his name added to the voter list in December 2024, two months before the elections. “I feared losing my identity during the SIR, so I applied in Bihar,” said Alam, who has been excluded in the Delhi rolls.
“We have lived in Delhi for many years. I last voted in the Delhi Vidhan Sabha elections in 2025. After the Delhi elections, the SIR was announced. At that time, it was said that for voter ID proof, you had to provide your father’s and mother’s voter ID details, or else your citizenship could be considered doubtful. This was a tense and problematic situation for me. So I went to Bihar, to Araria, where my father belongs. Some of our relatives live there and we also know the BLOs, so I went back to Araria for the voter card,” he said.
In Kidwai Nagar East, around 57 names added in December and January were deleted. One of them is Tabitha Jasper Williem, who was added at booth number 119 in January 2025 and has now been deleted, with the reason recorded as “untraceable/absent”.
When we contacted her mother, Jasper Williem, she was unaware that her daughter’s name had been deleted. “Now my daughter is admitted to a college outside Delhi, so we haven’t paid much attention to this,” she said.
Similarly, two voters registered at the address of a shop in Central Market – Lal Singh and Bhartendu Shukla – had their names removed from the voter list. When contacted, they too were unaware that their names had been deleted during the SIR.
ERO Piyush Mohanty said the complaints that BLOs did not visit voters’ homes were incorrect. He said the BLOs had visited the houses, but many residents in Pillanji are migrants and did not submit their forms.
“In the Kidwai Nagar area, where most residents are government servants, the BLOs reached out to them, but many of them had shifted to different houses. So, according to the rules, we deleted their names. However, during the claims and objections period, they can fill out Form 6 to get their names added back. We have already informed them about this,” he said.
Regarding the voters from the Blind Relief Association, he said, “I will get information on that. As of now, I have no idea.
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