New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has begun a revision of Delhi's electoral map, prompting political opposition and comparisons to the ongoing revision process in the state of Bihar. The process, a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, is the first of its kind in the capital in over two decades and places a new burden on citizens to proactively re-verify their voter status over the next two months.

The office of Delhi's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) confirmed on Wednesday (September 17) that preparations have begun for the task, which will anchor voter verification to the electoral rolls of 2002. Unlike past revisions where enumerators went door-to-door, the new process requires every voter to submit forms and documentation to booth level officers (BLOs).

According to the CEO's office, residents whose names are on both the 2002 and current rolls must submit a duplicate form with an extract from the 2002 list. For those who have come of age or moved to the city since 2002, a voter not on the 2002 list but whose parents were must furnish proof of that connection via an old electoral extract, alongside their own identity documents.

An election official stated the objective is to "include all eligible voters, and verify and remove illegal immigrants." However, the exercise has led to accusations that it could be a tool for disenfranchisement.

A city already on edge

The SIR follows the February 2025 assembly elections, during which the BJP and the then-ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) exchanged allegations regarding the voter lists.

Then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal accused the BJP of an "election scam," claiming that in his New Delhi constituency alone, the party was behind nearly 5,000 applications for vote deletions and 7,500 for new additions in just 15 days. He alleged that his party's verification of 500 of the deletion requests found 408 were legitimate voters who had resided at their addresses for 20 to 30 years. He also cited claims of 47 votes being added to a single "non-existent" house.

The BJP, which won the election, countered. Its Delhi chief, Virendra Sachdeva, accused AAP of manipulating the rolls with a "suspicious rush of new registrations" not from new 18-year-old voters, but from individuals aged 30 to 48.

At a meeting with Delhi's CEO on Thursday, the BJP welcomed the SIR as a chance to root out "fake names or infiltrators," while the Congress warned it would mirror the "opaque process" in Bihar used "to delete names of opposition supporters."

The Bihar precedent

Concerns in Delhi are informed by the ECI's ongoing revision in Bihar, which involved logistical, legal and political challenges.

First, the Bihar SIR began with a controversy over the ECI's exclusion of the Aadhaar card as a valid identity document. This led to a legal battle with the Supreme Court, which on August 14 directed the ECI to accept Aadhaar. After further complaints, the court issued another clarification on August 22.

On September 8, presented with "24 affidavits" from people unable to use their cards, a frustrated Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked the ECI's counsel: "This court has asked you several times to consider Aadhaar... Why are you not?"

The court ordered the EC to treat Aadhaar as the 12th valid document, a precedent now applied to Delhi.

Second, the scale of voter exclusion in Bihar was announced on August 1, when the ECI published its draft electoral roll. From a total electorate of 7.89 crore, 65 lakh voters were excluded. The ECI claimed these voters were dead, had shifted or were duplicates. Opposition parties and civil society groups warned of disenfranchisement of genuine citizens, particularly migrant labourers and the rural poor. The issue is particularly relevant for Delhi, which has the highest share of inter-state migrants in India.

Third, a dispute arose in Bihar over data transparency. The ECI initially uploaded digital, searchable PDF voter lists that allow for rapid data analysis. On August 9, two days after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a press conference alleging "fake" voters, the ECI replaced the digital lists on its websites with scanned images. These non-searchable files make large-scale scrutiny more difficult.

Currently, Delhi's 2002 electoral rolls are available on the CEO's website in a machine-readable format. The critical question is whether the ECI will maintain this standard for the new draft rolls or follow the Bihar precedent of using scanned images.

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