New Delhi: Outside Shaheen Bagh’s Chand Masjid, the questions are no longer about protest sites or road blockades, but about booth-level officers (BLOs), enumeration forms and whether elderly parents have the documents they may need.Volunteers say the mosque will set up neighbourhood camps, this time not to mobilise a protest, but to help residents complete Delhi’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.Six years after Shaheen Bagh became the face of the anti-CAA movement, the neighbourhood’s mosques and community organisations are now helping residents navigate one of Election Commission’s biggest voter verification exercises, spanning over a month, with over 13,000 BLOs visiting households across Delhi’s 70 Assembly constituencies while reassuring those anxious about the process.Shaheen Bagh’s now-famous “daadis”, who once sat through Delhi’s winter protesting against the CAA, are reminding neighbours to keep voter documents ready.Bilkis Bano, the 88-year-old Shaheen Bagh protester who became an international symbol of the anti-CAA movement after being named among TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people, currently in her native village in Hapur after the SIR there, told TOI: “Age doesn’t allow many of us to go out like before, but we can still help our neighbours. We must check on the elderly and ensure no one misses the BLO’s visit.”Fellow protester Gul Bano, also in her 80s, says she reminds neighbours to keep their “papers ready”. “Six years ago, we spent months sitting on the roads. Today, we are telling people to cooperate with the BLOs. Our biggest concern is that no genuine voter should be left out.”‘Saira daadi‘, from nearby Zakir Nagar, echoed the message. “Everyone should remain alert, but not panic.“ She said, “Relatives and friends in Bihar and West Bengal who kept their documents ready faced little difficulty.“In Shaheen Bagh, Batla House and Zakir Nagar, however, the exercise has revived memories of 2019-20, when documents became central to the public debate.“We are telling people it’s their duty as citizens,” said Mufti Hisamuddin, the imam of Chand Masjid. “We will guide people on required documents, helping elderly residents complete the process and ensuring no one misses a BLO’s visit,” he told TOI on Thursday.A few kilometres away, Batla House-based Mufti Khan said residents are anxious about procedural lapses rather than the documentation itself. “Elderly people, migrants, daily-wage workers and economically weaker families often do not know whether they possess all the required records or whether old documents will be accepted. Reports of names being removed during similar exercises in Bihar and West Bengal have spread quickly, leaving many uneasy,“ he said.Jamaat-e-Islami Hind has begun holding SIR readiness camps across several Muslim-majority localities. “There is widespread fear that genuine voters could be excluded,” vice-president Malik Motasim Khan told TOI. “Our effort is to ensure that people keep their documents ready, cooperate with BLOs, avoid rumours and pursue constitutional and legal remedies wherever necessary.”
