Pooja Devi, 38, has been living at the same address in Kalkaji for the past two decades, employed in domestic work, raising her children, and regularly voting in elections. When the special intensive revision of electoral rolls began in the national capital in June, however, she did not get any enumeration form. Once the draft roll was published, she hoped to find her name in the list of those removed because they were absent, shifted, dead, or with duplicate names, known as the ASDD list, but her name was missing there too.
“My husband and children received their forms but I did not. I had also voted in the 2025 elections with them. My name is nowhere,” she said, flummoxed by the booth-level officer’s claim that no form was generated in her name.
Ms. Devi seems to be among the 13.39 lakh voters whose names were deleted from the electoral roll in Delhi this year, even before the SIR process started in June, according to The Hindu’s analysis of data available on the website of Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). The period from January to June was earmarked for ‘preparatory’ measures, including pre-SIR mapping by BLOs. Among the 17 States where the third phase of the SIR is now ongoing, Delhi is the only one to have seen this massive rate of deletion of names during the preparatory period itself.
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Shrinking electorate
At the time of Assembly elections in February 2025, Delhi’s electorate stood at 1.56 crore voters. By June 16 this year, when the electoral roll was frozen before the SIR started, this had dropped to 1.45 crore, a decrease of 11.03 lakh names. A major chunk, 93%, of these names were removed during the five months of the pre-SIR mapping phase.
After the SIR started, a further 47.56 lakh names have been deleted in the draft roll published on August 31, meaning that so far, 37.6% or well over a third of the voters in the electoral roll during the 2025 Assembly election are no longer part of Delhi’s electorate.
Apart from the 13.39 lakh deletions since January, 1.65 lakh names were added to the roll during the five-month pre-SIR mapping period, while there were modifications in another 2.83 lakh voters’ names. This means that the net change between January and June 2026 was to shrink the electoral roll by 10.28 lakh names.
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‘Continuous updation’
A senior official claimed this was a routine exercise. “This was part of the continous updation of rolls, for dead, duplicate and permanently shifted voters,” he said. However, he could not explain the large number of deletions.
For instance, in the entire period between February and December 2025, there were only 75,313 net deletions; over the next five months however, there were lakhs of deletions each month, peaking at 3.39 lakh names in April 2026 alone, according to The Hindu’s analysis of the ‘monthly polling summary of additions, deletions, and modifications’ available on the Delhi CEO website. Also, this list does not indicate the reason for deletion, whether absent, shifted, dead, or duplicates, unlike the list of names removed after the SIR enumeration phase.
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‘Unprecedented’
Former Chief Election Commissioner of India S.Y. Quraishi termed the pre-SIR deletions in Delhi as “highly unusual” and “unprecedented”.
“This information should have come from the Election Commission itself. They should have issued a list of voter names removed, and explained the reasons for this scale of deletion. There should be no mystery or secrecy about this leading to investigations and speculations,” he told The Hindu.
Mr. Kumar and his office did not respond to The Hindu’s queries on the exercise, including whether notices were served to those whose names were deleted during the pre-SIR mapping exercise.
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Continuous updation rules
According to the Election Commission’s rules, continuous updation of the electoral roll happens through individual applications for new enrolments or objections, with BLO field verification required in cases of unregistered deaths and shifting of voters, only after receiving Form-7. In all such cases, a notice must be issued. The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) can also take up deletions, corrections, or shifting of names suo motu, based on the BLO’s field report, with the stipulation that individual names must be displayed publicly before they are deleted.
There is no draft roll or claims and objections period for such routine updating exercises, unlike for special revisions. If more than 2% of electors are removed or where the same person objects to more than five cases, the ERO is required to personally verify the deletions to ensure accuracy, the EC rules say.
In the annual summary revision and the SIR, on the other hand, the existing roll is revised as a whole. A draft roll is published after door-to-door visits by the BLO, claims and objections are invited and processed, after which the revised final roll is published.
Pre-SIR mapping was carried out in Delhi to map the voters with the 2002 electoral roll to ease the burden on the BLOs during the SIR itself, and 43% of electors were mapped, as per information shared by Delhi CEO Ashok Kumar earlier. However, no information was shared on the deletions done.
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Highest deletions in Delhi West
The pre-SIR deletions were much larger than in previous special summary revisions (SSR) in Delhi. The SSR undertaken just after the 2024 Lok Sabha election and before 2025 Assembly election, for instance, had seen only 1.41 lakh deletions, while the final roll saw a net increase in the size of the electorate, due to a higher number of new names added to the voter list.
During the continuous updation between February and December 2025, there were 75,313 deletions in total, woth several months in which no deletion requests were processed at all.
In 2026, however, there were lakhs of deletions each month across all constituencies, with the highest rate of deletions reported in April with 3.39 lakh, followed by May with 3 lakh. March followed with 2.5 lakh and February with 2 lakh.
Delhi West district reported the highest overall deletions of 2.32 lakh, followed by the North West (1.99 lakh), South West (1.40 lakh) and South East (1.39 lakh) districts. These are also the districts which saw the highest deletions during the SIR enumeration phase.
Other States that saw net reductions in their electorates between the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the beginning of the SIR were Uttarakhand (3.2 lakh), Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab, Odisha (2 lakh), and Chandigarh. Another 11 States reported net additions in their electorates.
