13 lakh Delhi voters deleted in pre-SIR mapping phase, highest in Phase-3 States

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A Booth Level Officer conduct a door to door drive a voter enumeration drive during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, at Bhim Enclave, Vikas Nagar near Uttam Nagar in Delhi. File | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Pooja Devi, 38, has been living at the same address in Kalkaji for the past two decades, employed in domestic work, raising her children, and regularly voting in elections. When the special intensive revision of electoral rolls began in the national capital in June, however, she did not get any enumeration form. Once the draft roll was published, she hoped to find her name in the list of those removed because they were absent, shifted, dead, or with duplicate names, known as the ASDD list, but her name was missing there too.

“My husband and children received their forms but I did not. I had also voted in the 2025 elections with them. My name is nowhere,” she said, flummoxed by the booth-level officer’s claim that no form was generated in her name.

Ms. Devi seems to be among the 13.39 lakh voters whose names were deleted from the electoral roll in Delhi this year, even before the SIR process started in June, according to The Hindu ’s analysis of data available on the website of Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). The period from January to June was earmarked for ‘preparatory’ measures, including pre-SIR mapping by BLOs. Among the 17 States where the third phase of the SIR is now ongoing, Delhi is the only one to have seen this massive rate of deletion of names during the preparatory period itself.

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At the time of Assembly elections in February 2025, Delhi’s electorate stood at 1.56 crore voters. By June 16 this year, when the electoral roll was frozen before the SIR started, this had dropped to 1.45 crore, a decrease of 11.03 lakh names. A major chunk, 93%, of these names were removed during the five months of the pre-SIR mapping phase.

After the SIR started, a further 47.56 lakh names have been deleted in the draft roll published on August 31, meaning that so far, 37.6% or well over a third of the voters in the electoral roll during the 2025 Assembly election are no longer part of Delhi’s electorate.

Apart from the 13.39 lakh deletions since January, 1.65 lakh names were added to the roll during the five-month pre-SIR mapping period, while there were modifications in another 2.83 lakh voters’ names. This means that the net change between January and June 2026 was to shrink the electoral roll by 10.28 lakh names.

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A senior official claimed this was a routine exercise. “This was part of the continous updation of rolls, for dead, duplicate and permanently shifted voters,” he said.