A people’s audit of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Mangolpuri area in North-west Delhi culminated in a public hearing on 5 September 2026, exposing serious concerns of wrongful deletions, arbitrary classifications and lack of due process.

Over three weeks, citizen volunteers and civil society representatives under the banner of Jan Sarokar, MKSS and Voter Adhikar Manch conducted house-to-house verification of nearly 10,000 voters across eight polling booths in Mangolpuri’s Y-Block using the 2025 Delhi Assembly electoral rolls as the baseline. The audit found voters who were present at their addresses but marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate (i.e. the “ASDD” list) following the SIR exercise. Of the approximately 9,600 registered voters of Y-Block, only about 5,800 appeared on the draft SIR roll, while about 2,800 found themselves on the ASDD list and about 1,800 who could not be found in either the draft SIR rolls nor the ASDD list despite being on the 2025 Voter List.

These findings – along with 32 testimonies – were presented at the four-hour public hearing before a jury comprising Retd. Supreme Court Judge Justice Madan Lokur, writer and former Member, Planning Commission Syeeda Hameed (Jan Sarokar), Bezwada Wilson (Safai Karamchari Andolan), Annie Raja (NFIW), Nisha Siddhu (NFIW), Rashmi Singh (Principal, Primary School, Mangolpuri C-Block), Subhash Bhatnagar (National Campaign for Construction Workers), General Anil Verma (Association for Democratic Reforms) and Tara Rao (Edellu Karnataka). Simultaneously, a camp was organised to assist people excluded from the draft rolls in understanding the reason behind their exclusion as well as filing claims and objections. BLOs of the eight booths were invited but did not attend the public hearing.

The testimonies revealed the human consequences of the exercise. Kanta Prasad, resident of House No. 2267, Y-Block, is alive and voted in the previous election, yet was marked “dead”. He had submitted an application to correct his name, but instead of correcting the entry, his name was deleted. Laxmi Devi and her husband, a Fire Department employee, voted in 2025 but found themselves missing from both the draft roll and ASDD list while other family members remained enrolled. There were cases where some family members were marked as shifted or absent even as others in the same family found their place in the draft SIR Roll. Several others reported never receiving the enumeration forms at all. The jury highlighted the gravity of these exclusions. General Anil Verma, who heads ADR said: “After serving 37 years in the Indian Army, I still received a notice to show documents that would prove my citizenship and protect my right to vote.” 

The concerns extend beyond Mangolpuri. Delhi’s electoral roll had already fallen from 1.56 crore electors in January 2025 to 1.45 crore at the beginning of the SIR exercise – a reduction of over 11 lakh voters. With the publication of the draft rolls on 31 August, over 40% of Delhi’s voters were at risk of deletion. Annie Raja underlined the constitutional values at stake, “Whatever be our religion and caste, we are all voters and citizens in this country. The office of the ECI has been set up to ensure that eligible voters are registered, not to delete eligible voters. Is sunvai me gumshuda log mil gaye, aur mare hue log jeevit ho gaye.”

The People’s Audit demonstrated that electoral rolls can and must be publicly scrutinized. Door-to-door verification, public hearings, assistance camps and documentation of wrongful deletions and omissions can help bring transparency and accountability into the process. Social activist Nikhil Dey emphasized that the voter list belongs to the people and every citizen must have the opportunity to verify it, challenge wrongful deletion and be heard.

The public hearing culminated with the following list of demands:

1. Every person wrongly marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate, or missing from the SIR lists altogether must be restored, and action must be taken against officials responsible for erroneous deletions.
2. Restoration must be through Form 8, not Form 6. Citizens must be restored with their correct existing details, not treated as new voters.
3. The Election Commission must implement its own Manual on Electoral Rolls (2023) – including the social-audit provisions, particularly Para 11.2.4(vi) and Para 24.1.2, which require draft electoral rolls to be read out in Gram Sabha/Ward Committee meetings so that omissions and errors can be identified and remedied.
4. All revisions, claims and objections must be subject to a public collective verification process – such as public hearings – in both urban and rural areas.
5. The people of Mangolpuri Y-Block must be heard at special camps and public hearings such as today’s at least once a week – with all BLOs present – and all corrections must be made within one month. The people demanded accountability for wrongful deletions and omissions.

Justice Lokur highlighted that BLOs are required to make at least three visits to a household before marking a voter ASDD, and also reiterated the direction of the Supreme Court that Aadhaar must be accepted as valid identification, along with PAN cards and previous EPIC cards used for voting in earlier elections. He further stated that all the findings from the audit exercise would be collectively presented to the Election Commission and a demand would be made that people’s right to vote is protected and accountability is fixed for those cases where wrongful deletion has taken place.

Jan Sarokar called upon civil society organizations, workers’ organizations, women’s groups, unions, people’s movements, academics, lawyers and citizens across the country to undertake People’s Audits of SIR in their own areas and build a nationwide public movement for transparent, accountable and participatory electoral rolls based on mandatory social audits as the means of carrying out “special intensive reviews”. Tara Rao stated that we need to remember what it is to be a citizen, and therefore assert and claim our right to vote. Such a right cannot be subject to an arbitrary process like this. The voter list belongs to the people, and every citizen has the right to be on it, to question their exclusion and to be heard.