The Delhi SIR process has resolved notices involving 20 lakh electors, more than 60% of the 33.1 lakh people asked to prove their eligibility for inclusion in the draft electoral roll. The rapid acceleration has brought the revision closer to its next deadline, but the figures also reveal the administrative pressure involved in rebuilding the capital’s voter database before the final rolls are published.
The Chief Electoral Officer’s office said on Monday that 20 lakh cases had been resolved. That figure includes electors whose details have been verified and will be included in the final roll, as well as cases that have been rejected. The disposal process can continue until November 30, while the final electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on December 4.
The pace of disposal has changed sharply. Only about four lakh notices had been resolved in the first 30 days after the draft rolls were published on August 31. In the following 12 days, approximately 16 lakh notices were disposed of, equivalent to around 1.33 lakh cases a day. The difference is not simply a measure of staff productivity. It reflects a change in the procedure, the deployment of more officials and the use of administrative targets to clear a backlog that had accumulated at the start of the exercise.
Delhi’s SIR began on June 30, when the city had around 1.45 crore electors. The draft roll published on August 31 contained about 97.5 lakh names. Around 47.5 lakh electors—almost one-third of the pre-SIR total—were classified as “uncollectible” after Booth-Level Officers found them absent, shifted, deceased or represented by duplicate entries. Those names were removed from the roll before the notice-and-objection stage.
The remaining draft-roll population was not automatically secure. Around 33.1 lakh electors, or nearly 34% of those included in the draft, received notices asking them to establish their eligibility for inclusion in the final roll. Of these, 13.79 lakh were flagged because they could not be linked to the electoral roll used in the previous SIR in 2002. Another 19.33 lakh were identified for what the election authorities called “logical discrepancies” in their enumeration forms.
These categories point to two different administrative problems. The first concerns continuity: whether an elector can be connected to an earlier electoral record. The second concerns internal consistency: whether information in the current form appears to contain a discrepancy. In both cases, the burden of responding falls on the elector, even though the exercise is being carried out through a large government apparatus of electoral registration officers, assistant electoral registration officers and booth-level officials.
Initially, many flagged electors were required to appear before a local Electoral Registration Officer at a designated hearing time and produce one of 13 prescribed documents. That process created a conventional office-based model of verification, requiring residents to understand the notice, collect acceptable documents and reach the relevant office within the prescribed process.
The Election Commission changed that model at its September 26 meeting. Electors flagged for logical discrepancies or because they were “unmapped” were no longer required to attend hearings at the local office. Booth-Level Officers were authorised to visit homes and collect documents. Online hearing facilities were strengthened, and family members were permitted to appear on behalf of electors who had received notices.
The portal used by Electoral Registration Officers was also changed. Since September 30, officers have been able to dispose of notices without holding a hearing if a Booth-Level Officer’s letter indicates that the elector’s details have been verified. This substantially reduces the number of cases requiring a formal appearance before an officer. The change helps explain how the number of disposals rose from four lakh to 20 lakh in less than two weeks.
The administration has reinforced the new process with additional personnel and fixed targets. The number of Assistant Electoral Registration Officers, who are often school principals and are empowered to dispose of notices, rose from 297 to 902 on September 24. Officials have also said Booth-Level Officers were given a target of conducting at least 10 hearings each day. Several Booth-Level Officers told the Indian Express that disposal became faster after they became more familiar with the online portal.
This is an important institutional detail. Electoral roll revision is often understood as a technical database exercise, but the Delhi figures show that it depends on a large network of officials working at neighbourhood level. Booth-Level Officers are the operational link between the Election Commission’s procedures and residents’ homes. Their workload, training, ability to interpret documents and access to digital systems can directly affect whether a case is resolved, rejected or left pending.
The shift to door-to-door verification and online hearings also acknowledges that a single office-based process cannot easily serve all urban residents. Delhi’s population includes people who are mobile, homeless, displaced by demolitions or living in informal conditions. The CEO’s office has organised special camps for vulnerable groups, including homeless people, those displaced by demolitions, transgender residents and sex workers. Awareness campaigns have used hoardings, radio jingles, advertisements and announcements on the Delhi Metro.
These measures give the revision a distinctly urban administrative character. A city’s population is not static: residents change addresses, rental households move frequently, informal settlements may be demolished or relocated, and people can be absent from their recorded address when officials visit. The same conditions that make urban labour markets and housing systems dynamic can make voter records difficult to maintain. A name marked “absent” or “shifted” may reflect a genuine change, but it may also raise questions about how effectively the system reaches residents who do not have stable or easily documented addresses.
The scale of the Delhi exercise makes the distinction between removal and final exclusion especially significant. The 47.5 lakh names classified as uncollectible were struck off before the draft roll stage, while the 33.1 lakh notices concern people who did appear in the draft but were asked to establish eligibility. The 20 lakh cases now described as resolved include both approvals and rejections. The headline disposal figure therefore does not by itself show how many electors will ultimately remain on the final roll.
That is why the December 4 final-roll deadline matters more than the current disposal rate. Until the remaining cases are processed and the outcomes are separated between verified inclusions and rejections, the 20 lakh figure mainly measures administrative activity. It does not provide a complete account of the final size or composition of Delhi’s electorate.
The process also illustrates how administrative simplification can improve speed while changing the nature of scrutiny. Requiring a physical hearing creates a heavier burden for residents and officials. Allowing a Booth-Level Officer’s report to support disposal removes an important procedural step and may make the system more accessible. At the same time, it places greater importance on the quality of field verification and on the ability of residents to challenge an incorrect finding.
The authorities have responded to this challenge by extending the period for disposal and by using camps and outreach measures. The deadline for publishing the final rolls has already been revised for the fourth time, with the latest change announced on September 26. The additional time reflects the size of the exercise, but it also indicates that the original administrative timetable was not sufficient for the volume of cases generated by the revision.
Delhi is not the only jurisdiction highlighting this approach. Chief Electoral Officers in Jharkhand, Mizoram, Sikkim, West Bengal, Bihar, Puducherry, Uttarakhand and Gujarat have also posted about proactive campaigns and special camps intended to ensure that eligible voters are not left out. The Delhi experience therefore sits within a wider administrative effort, although the figures supplied in the report establish the scale and procedural changes only for the capital.
The larger urban question is whether electoral systems can keep pace with cities whose residents are increasingly mobile, whose addresses may be temporary and whose access to official documents varies sharply. A revision that removes duplicates, deceased electors and people who have shifted can improve the accuracy of the roll. But a revision that relies heavily on documentary continuity and field-level interpretation must also ensure that residents with weak documentation, disrupted housing histories or limited access to officials are not lost in the process.
The evidence currently confirms three things: Delhi has processed most of the notices issued after the draft roll; the pace increased after the Election Commission simplified hearings and expanded the administrative workforce; and the final outcome remains unsettled because resolved cases include both approvals and rejections. The remaining notices can be processed until November 30, with the final electoral rolls due on December 4. Those two dates will determine whether the accelerated process produces a more accurate roll without excluding eligible residents who were difficult to reach or verify.
