New Delhi: “Pehle vote gaya, phir jhuggi gayi,” rued domestic help Maya Devi (58) from Mayur Vihar Phase-I. Her name and those of her two daughters are missing from electoral rolls, while her husband and son are listed.On top of that, her shanty has been demolished, forcing five members of the family to squeeze into a tiny kitchen-cum-room near Pillar 1 of Mayur Vihar metro station. “I called up the BLO to help me fill out the form so that I could re-enter the list. But he never came to me,” she said, adding that she has been living in Delhi since she was 13 and has voted in every election, including the 2025 assembly polls.Maya was among several people, including a former Lok Sabha MP, a teacher who has submitted over 500 enumeration forms from his now-razed slum, and a man described as a “walking dead”, who testified at a public hearing Thursday held by an independent commission examining grievances over Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of poll rolls.The witnesses, who took an oath in the name of God, came from West Bengal, Delhi, Telangana, Bihar and Rajasthan. They told the commission presided over by former judges, Justices A K Patnaik, Rekha Sharma and Anjana Prakash, that their names had been deleted despite submitting relevant documents.Presenters from Voter Adhikar Manch and Jan Sarokar highlighted the scale of deletions in Delhi. The Jan 2025 electoral rolls had over 1.5 crore voters, but around 11 lakh were removed through monthly deletions before the SIR freeze, mostly between Jan and June 2026. The draft rolls published this Aug 31 further excluded over 47 lakh voters.Former Bengal MP Tarun Mondal said his name was struck off despite his family completing the enrolment process. Claiming that he had written to “everyone”, from Prime Minister to President, about the deletion, he said, “How could I have been an MP if I was not a voter of India? Does that mean I am a Bangladeshi?” he asked, adding that only President responded to him.Kamal, a teacher from Bela Estate, said he had been voting since 2002 and that his name was on the rolls last year as well. “I was born here in 1986. My grandfather came here in 1913, and my father is around 70. Now, we are being told we are encroachers, though we submitted more than 500 enrolment forms,” he said.The hearing also flagged “logical discrepancies” used to question voters’ eligibility, including the number of siblings and small age gaps between parents and children. According to the findings by Voter Adhikar Manch, Muslims were more frequently flagged for such discrepancies at the notice stage in Delhi and Karnataka.Sabir Ahmed, who conducted a citizens’ audit in Bengal, said the use of AI to flag these anomalies failed to account for social realities, including early marriages and motherhood.The independent commission called for collective public scrutiny of electoral rolls, arguing that individual verification and claims and objections alone cannot adequately detect errors of inclusion, exclusion, duplication or incorrect classification. It proposed reading draft rolls aloud at public meetings so that residents can verify entries and flag errors before finalisation.
