Tracing voters in an ever-evolving Bengaluru

After receiving her enumeration form, Lakshmi P. (name changed), a 59-year-old voter from Padmanabhanagar, began searching for her details in the 2002 electoral rolls. She sifted through over 120 voters with the same name. Different spellings, the expansion of her initial and even her parents’ names led nowhere. It was only after she found her husband’s 2002 voter identity card that she realised the family’s electoral record in 2002 was under Uttarahalli Assembly constituency, not Padmanabhanagar. 

Relieved that she had finally traced the record, Lakshmi turned back to the enumeration form, only to find that the pre-filled details carried the same spelling error that appeared in her voter identity card. 

Should she point it out before submitting the form or later? Did both sides of the form have to be filled? Were all fields mandatory? If the pre-filled details were incorrect, whom should she approach? 

Similar questions have haunted voters in Bengaluru — a city with over 1.03 crore voters, making up approximately one-sixth of Karnataka’s total 5.54-crore electorate. 

A very changed city

From its demography to its geography, Bengaluru looked very different 24 years ago, in 2002, when Karnataka last undertook an “intensive revision of special nature” of its electoral rolls. 

For instance, Whitefield and Mahadevapura had not yet become the dense urban corridors they are today. Yelahanka, Uttarahalli, and Kengeri lay on the edges of a much smaller city. Over two decades since, Bengaluru has expanded in every direction. Assembly constituencies were redrawn and lakhs of people who moved to the city for work, education and marriage eventually transferred their vote here. 

Moreover, Bengaluru’s growth earlier hinged on migration from North Karnataka and neighbouring States such as Tamil Nadu, and later from across the country as the city’s technology and services sectors expanded. The city’s electoral rolls, therefore, are itself a record of migration. 

With the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) under way, Lakshmi’s experience mirrors the questions many voters and even Booth Level Officers (BLOs) say they are facing while filling the enumeration forms. 

Why city lags behind

While the Election Commission says SIR is necessary because “two decades of urbanisation and migration have significantly altered the electoral rolls”, the very reasons cited by the commission — migration, changing addresses and a constantly evolving electorate — are also the reasons verification has become particularly challenging in Bengaluru, where SIR progress has lagged behind most districts despite 8,972 BLOs being drafted from almost every department. 

The city is home to lakhs of people living in apartment complexes as well as hundreds of notified and non-notified slum settlements. While many apartment residents spoke about struggling to understand Kannada-only forms, residents in several slum settlements said their immediate concern was ensuring that their names remained on the electoral rolls, which many said meant “welfare benefits” and proof of residence. 

Pointing to the lack of awareness, a BLO assigned for New Timberyard Layout, off Mysore Road, said, “Only a limited number of enumeration forms had reached the area till last week. Those who did not receive one went back to their homes and returned with documents. They could not understand why only some households had received the forms.”

“When I said I would return after receiving more forms, many residents came back carrying Aadhaar cards, ration cards, voter identity cards and every other document, repeatedly requesting me to ensure that their names were not left out of the electoral rolls,” the BLO added. 

Link to welfare benefits

For many residents in informal settlements, the anxiety stemmed from more than the fear of losing the right to vote. Many families said their voter identity card was linked to welfare benefits and also served as one of the primary documents establishing their residence in Bengaluru. 

For many, however, the confusion began with the form itself. 

In Telangana, besides Telugu forms, English forms are distributed in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits, while dummy forms have also been made available in Urdu. In Karnataka, however, the SIR enumeration forms are printed only in Kannada. In Bengaluru, where a large section of the population speaks English and many residents do not know how to read Kannada, this has become a recurring complaint. 

“I don’t know how to read Kannada. l don’t know how to check the 2002 rolls because they are all in Kannada,” said a resident from Bellandur. 

Many BLOs express helplessness too. “Many people have filled both sides of the form. People don’t remember where they voted in 2002. Many who were not required to provide progeny details have filled in their parents’ details because they could not find their own 2002 records instead of leaving the section blank. Others have added details of both their spouse and parents because they did not want to leave any section empty. How do we help them? There are no uniform instructions for us either. Many of us do not know how to read Kannada, yet we are expected to verify forms filled in Kannada. Even during digitisation, this has become a problem,” a BLO from Bescom said. 

Moreover, even those who were aware of the exercise said they struggled to keep pace with its changing requirements as the Election Commission introduced new provisions with each phase. In Phase II, 2002 linking began alongside the concept of “logical discrepancies”, first seen during the SIR in West Bengal. In Phase III, logical discrepancies became part of the notification. A declaration was also added to Form 6 requiring a person applying as a new voter to declare that his or her parents were part of the last SIR. 

When the exercise began, differences in spellings across documents, implausible gaps between a child and parent or grandparent, and variations in names across records were categorised as logical discrepancies. The category has now formally become part of the SIR, with many voters reporting that discrepancies were flagged after they submitted their forms. 

Multiple BLOs said documentation gaps and discrepancies were more common in cities such as Bengaluru, where people had lost document trails while shifting houses, documents had been issued hurriedly, or where common names had been recorded with different spellings across records. 

“My father is named as my husband in one of my documents, while in two documents his initials are expanded. As long as we had documents, we never thought such a situation could arise,” said an anganwadi teacher, who is also working as a BLO. “We did not even have a home. I myself will neither be able to fulfil the mapping criteria nor be able to file a claim because I have many discrepancies in my documents.” she said. 

‘Permanent’ elsewhere

The exercise has also brought into focus documentation gaps across different sections of the population. Thousands of workers who spend most of the year in Bengaluru continue to maintain their permanent residence in their native districts, travelling back during agricultural seasons. As a result, many of their older documents remain linked to their hometowns. 

“My brother has filled the form for our entire family because forms were given for me, my wife and our three children in Koppal. But we don’t know which documents they will ask for. We have only Aadhaar and a ration card,” said Tanveer, a gig worker. 

It was against this backdrop that the State government recently began doorstep delivery of Permanent Residence Certificates (PRCs) and caste certificates, both included in the Election Commission’s ‘indicative’ list of 11 documents. For many voters who had shifted to Bengaluru years ago for work, education or marriage, the move appeared to provide an additional document that could be produced if their eligibility was questioned during verification. 

However, uncertainty remains. Election authorities have declined to state clearly and categorically whether a PRC by itself would suffice, saying the issue would arise only during the claims and objections stage after publication of the draft electoral rolls. 

It is to be noted that during the SIR in West Bengal, Electoral Registration Officers were instructed to accept only Permanent Residence Certificates issued under the 1999 Rules rather than treating every PRC alike. 

Whether Karnataka’s newly introduced PRCs will ultimately serve the purpose many voters expect, will therefore depend on the Election Commission’s interpretation during verification, rather than merely on the State government’s decision to issue them. 

Struggles of BLOs

If voters were trying to understand changing rules, BLOs said they were trying to implement them while continuing with their regular government duties. Several said their own offices were already functioning with staff shortages, leaving them to balance routine government work with repeated door-to-door visits, verification, digitisation and mounting public queries. 

Initially, when the exercise began, complaints were raised against BLOs for distributing forms from public places such as temples, mosques and government offices instead of going door to door. BLOs, however, argue that door-to-door enumeration within given timeline is impossible. 

“If we make five calls, only one person confirms that they are free and we can go and hand over the form. The rest are not at home because everyone is working. By the time they return, our work is over. In such a situation, what do we do?” one BLO asked. 

Many people, even after more than half of the enumeration period had passed, said they had still not received their forms. 

For BLOs, delayed distribution often means repeated visits. “We are visiting houses in some areas six or seven times just to give the form. Will we get extra payment for visiting six times instead of three?” one BLO said, flagging also exhaustion and health issues. Some said they found the exercise intimidating because they feared they would ultimately be held responsible for mistakes beyond their control.

However, instead of addressing these concerns, many BLOs said they were threatened with disciplinary action and issued show-cause notices for failing to meet prescribed SIR targets. 

Officials working as BLOs said they had been drafted into the exercise with no training while continuing to perform their regular duties. Some said they had even turned to YouTube videos to understand procedures they were expected to implement. 

Several women BLOs also pointed to another consequence of the exercise. “They have given our personal numbers on the form. Some men have started troubling us through WhatsApp texts and videocalls at odd hours,” said a BLO from the Education Department. 

Yet many BLOs said the greatest difficulty was that they themselves could not answer several of the questions voters were asking. 

Many said the same historical electoral rolls and supplementary records that voters were searching for were themselves unavailable in several Bengaluru constituencies, leaving BLOs with little guidance despite being the first point of contact. “The larger problem is that we are expected to verify information that many times we ourselves cannot verify,” one BLO said. 

Several officials said the pressure to improve numbers had gradually become the focus of the exercise. 

Most ASDDO numbers

An Additional District Election Officer (ADEO) pointed out that Bengaluru has reported one of the highest numbers of ASDDO voters — “absent, shifted, duplicate, dead and others” voters. However, he said those figures often reflected the city’s mobility rather than the accuracy of the exercise. “In many places, BLOs have delivered forms at both addresses, in case of duplicate votes, because they could not establish where the person actually resides. The figures do not depict that picture,” the official said, arguing that distribution figures by themselves reveal very little about how smoothly the exercise is progressing. As of July 22, 25.47 lakh voters within the GBA limits had been marked under ASDDO category.

“Distribution figures are being celebrated, but digitisation figures tell a different story. They show how many forms have actually come back and how many can be verified. In the GBA limits, only 31.28% of forms had been digitised as of July 22, compared with the Statewide figure of 67.23%. Moreover, many forms are incomplete or wrongly filled because people are rushing to submit them. BLOs are under pressure from BLAs and EROs to keep calling voters so the forms can be digitised. But is completing the exercise the only objective?” the ADEO asked. 

The question, several officials argued, is not whether ineligible names should be identified, but whether the process can be done without making eligible voters navigate multiple rounds of confusion, missing records and verification in a city whose electorate has drastically changed over the past two decades. It is this complexity, they said, that results in Bengaluru’s daily progress figures being poorer than rest of Karnataka.