Delhi SIR: 60% notification cases verified; liquidation gathers pace under limited control, standards

Election officials have verified about 60% or nearly 20 lakh of the 33 lakh voters who were served notices under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Delhi due to logical inconsistencies or not being mapped in the 2002 rolls and cleared their names for inclusion in the final list, the Elector’s Office Chief Officer said (CEO) on Monday 12, 2026).

As many as 19 million of these cases have been clarified in the last two weeks alone.

The sudden increase in the rate of destruction of notices follows the introduction of new options on the ECINET portal of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and new verbal instructions from the office of Delhi CEO Ashok Kumar to speed up the process and prevent unauthorized deletion. The changes were implemented between September 30 and October 2.

These voters are included in the draft voter list released on August 31, which contains 97.5 million names, but their eligibility for inclusion in the final voter list is subject to additional scrutiny.

The last date for disposal of these notices is 30 November, with the final list published on 4 December.

Spicy in liquidation

The rate of decline was not consistent. While the notification phase began on August 31, almost a month later, by September 26, only about 96,000 cases were parked for the final drive, according to progress data recorded by The Hindu.

While the Delhi CEO did not share the status of notification clearance by constituencies during this period, he said for the first time in a press release on October 5 that more than 10 million notifications have been verified. Now, a week later, he says, “About 20 million cases out of 33 million have been solved so far.”

“If anyone has any grievance, please feel free to contact any of the 14,947 BLOs, 902 AEROs, 70 ERÚ, 13 DEOs or the Director General,” the release said.

Although the last date for disposal of notices is November 30, the officers have been asked to prioritize disposal and clear all cases in the following week.

Unlike the CEOs of other states like Karnataka and Jharkhand, the Delhi CEO did not share the progress with the status of constituency notification data.

The original report, accessed by The Hindu, also showed that 350 voters were declared “ineligible”.

This was rebuffed by the Delhi CEO, who sternly warned through a letter dated September 25 that no deletion should be on “flimsy grounds” and that thorough verification should follow.

What has changed

The focus appears to have shifted from proving that a person has a 2002 connection, or “citizenship proof” based on 11 documents prescribed by the ECI, to simply seeing if they meet the eligibility criteria, according to several election officials.

“Neither the mapping nor the logical inconsistencies affect the eligibility of a voter who is an Indian citizen above 18 years and residing in the constituency. Whether they were able to join or have any set of documents does not interfere with the right to vote. The BLO can verify whether a person is staying somewhere and it is obvious whether they are above 18 years.

The same clarity was not even a month ago, said the ERO, which had previously been given strict instructions to rely on the documents.

Booth Level Officers (BLOs) said the document norms have been relaxed, with instructions to collect whatever paper is available with the voter and submit their undertaking along with it.

“The BLOs were also informed in a meeting held on October 1 that our undertaking, which we submitted along with the documents collected from the voters, will now work independently in cases where the voter has received notice that he does not have the prescribed documents,” a BLO trainer from south-east Delhi told The Hindu.

At the notification stage, the BLO submits its undertaking that the verification has been completed and the voter is found eligible for further ERO approval.

Once the new options came in that allowed the ERO to declare voters eligible without requiring documents or a notice disposal hearing by uploading a “hearing order”, some disposed of more notices than were distributed.

“I got rid of all the cases of logical irregularities in my constituency. It was more than the number of notices distributed by the BLO,” said ERO.

Such cases have surfaced in various constituencies, resulting in BLOs and voters not knowing that notification cases have already been disposed of.

The Hindu has learned that the Delhi CEO has written to the ECI asking for a feature on the ECINET portal through which a voter can see the status of his notification.

Control reduced

Even as people continue to visit hearing centers in some parts of Delhi, despite BLOs being asked to collect documents from voters’ homes, no one is being turned away for documents, the level of scrutiny of which has been relaxed since the initial days.

At one such center in Chandni Chowk, voters were asked to send a scanned copy of one document and a notification via WhatsApp. “The photo participation process has also been cancelled,” the official said.

Earlier, the officials also insisted on the extract from the 2002 SIR list by which the voters mapped themselves.

That was no longer needed.

Haroon Khan, who received an alert about the name mismatch, said, “My BLO told me that it is a fake news that the BLO has to collect documents from home. She told me that I will have to go to the hearing, so I took half a day to come here. Now they don’t want hard copies, only scanned copies.”

This is the same center where 63-year-old Sanichari Devi had to make three rounds of a copier shop and her home before submitting these documents in early September, where a hard copy was a must and some documents were non-negotiable.

Published – 13 Oct 2026 01:01 IST