New Delhi: “Aapko kab pata chala ki aap mar gaye hain?” a Jan Sarokar representative asked 51-year-old Kanta Prasad after he found “dead” written beside his name on the city’s draft electoral roll.It was a surreal moment of a “dead man” walking among those marked “shifted” or “absent”, as Mangolpuri residents gathered at a Jan Sunwai to find out what had happened to their names after the draft roll was published under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive. Several residents who had submitted their enumeration forms to booth-level officers (BLOs) said they were shocked to find their names missing or their status changed.Five days after the draft roll removed nearly 47.7 lakh of nearly 1.45 crore voters listed in the current electoral roll, 2,28,764 Form 6 applications have been received in Delhi, with North West district accounting for 23,268, among the highest numbers, as people were compelled to register afresh.The Delhi chief electoral officer’s office advised citizens to check their names in the draft roll and, if missing, submit Form 6 along with the prescribed declaration and supporting documents for inclusion in the final roll.For Prasad, the deletion was particularly difficult to comprehend. “I have lived in the same locality for 35 years, working as a tailor. Yet in my family of four, I am the only one whose name has been struck off the roll,” he said.The concerns echoed an observation by former Supreme Court Justice and chairperson of United Nations Internal Justice Council, Madan B Lokur, who said such cases could be easily verified by BLOs before genuine voters were removed.He also questioned what document ultimately determines a person’s electoral identity. “All of these documents, be it Aadhaar, PAN or EPIC card, are issued by govt and Election Commission of India, and despite having these, names are being deleted.”Many exasperated residents stood clutching their Aadhaar and EC-issued EPIC cards, wondering what value these documents held when they were struggling to establish the decades they had lived in the same neighbourhood.Marked “absent”, 49-year-old Laxmi Devi said the BLO had visited her home only once, when neither she nor her firefighter husband was home. “When we called up the BLO, she said there was no way out and we would have to register as new voters. But why should I? I have voted for the last 27 years.”Ram Janaki, a volunteer with AV Baliga Memorial Trust who has been going door to door since Tuesday, said “shifted” was among the most cited reasons for striking off names. Migrant workers and women who moved out after marriage were particularly vulnerable, she said, with some labelled “duplicate” because another entry carried the same father’s name and their maternal home address.For 71-year-old widow Guddi Devi, who lives alone, the form itself proved an obstacle. Its terminology was difficult to understand, she said, while officers were asking residents to fill it out quickly. She now finds herself marked “permanently shifted” from the home she has not left in 35 years.Carina, a Voter Adhikar Manch representative, said the confusion was compounded by BLOs appearing inadequately briefed and working under a tight deadline. “Whenever a voter doesn’t match the criteria — their name doesn’t match the 2002 electoral roll, they aren’t at home, or there is a mistake in the form — BLOs are scoring them out because of the time crunch.”As Mangolpuri became the first collective platform for citizens to question their deletion, Nikhil Dey of Mazdoor called for wider awareness campaigns from EC’s side. “The whole exercise has become so citizen-centric, without taking into account that not everyone can understand the process, and needs to be assisted so that no citizen is deprived of their rights.”
