Amid SIR Hearings Across Delhi, Many Voters Say They Were Unaware of Notices

New Delhi: Sunita Devi has an Aadhaar card, a PAN card, and a bank passbook. She has lived in Delhi for the last 30 years, having moved here as a young bride from a village in Bihar’s Madhubani district. But none of this is sufficient under Delhi’s ongoing SIR (Special Intensive Revision) process. 

She is one of 33 lakh Delhi voters with a notice from the Election Commission. The notice says that she failed to establish herself, or a relative as a “registered elector,” in reference to the 2002 elections, which is when the SIR was last conducted.

Devi knows her polling booth. It is the MCD School in Munirka. She has voted before.

What she did not know, however, was that she had received a notice. Her son told her that he had received a call, and she duly arrived at the Baradghar, the community hall in Munirka. She was not instructed to carry any documents. The booth level officer (BLO) only told her son that she had to show up.

“Kya musibat hai [what a difficult situation]. I’ve lived here for 30 years. I’m not going to be able to get any other papers,” she said. “My entire family here is now. My house in the village is locked. I can’t speak to the pradhan.”

Sunita Devi waiting to meet her BLO and receive her notice. Photo: Antara Baruah

Across the capital city of Delhi, across class-lines and neighbourhoods, hearings are taking place for those who have received SIR notices, citing either “logical discrepancies” or “no mapping” – in order to make sure that ‘no voter is left behind.’ But what this part of the process exposes is Delhi’s disfigurement, echoing the same inequalities that the electoral system is supposed to disguise. While the handing out of notices has been ubiquitous – reaching Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta, former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, and external affairs minister S. Jaishankar – the ability to manage them differs.

A few kilometres from the Baradghar, which is encased by power lines, potholed roads, homes and shops squeezed together, is the leafy DDA colony of Munirka Enclave, an upscale, upper-middle class neighbourhood. A list of names was shared on the RWA WhatsApp group, consisting of those who have been sent notices. They were told which documents they need to carry: passports, a document proving their date of birth (typically the class 10 pass certificate), and a bank-related document. 

Jeetender Sharma, a retired Haryana Civil Servant, his wife, Heera Sharma, and their son and daughter-in-law have also received notices. While Sharma and his wife remove the yellowing 10th board certificates from their folders, alongside copies of their passports and Sharma’s pension certificate, and even have a uniformed personal security officer to get more copies, the others are left overwhelmed by the system. 

Several citizens of Munirka are seeing and reading the reasons behind their notices for the first time, but many others simply cannot. Devi, for instance, is illiterate. Her BLO pushes her to sign, to scrawl anything she likes on the sheet of paper, before she tells him she can’t. He doesn’t have a thumb pad, and signs himself. He asks her for her father’s name, but it isn’t on her Aadhaar or PAN card, and she doesn’t know the spelling. 

Inside the baratghar (community centre), BLOs are surrounded by anxious voters clutching polythene packets and cement bags filled with papers. They upload photographs of voters holding their notices, the documents themselves, and end with a selfie. 

“If I was that literate, I’d be able to tell you,” said 35-year-old Sushil Kumar, originally from Simanpur, Jharkhand, upon being asked the reason behind his notice. He has voted in the last two elections.

Splayed on the table is a thick file of documents, from which Kumar fishes out his class 10 certificate, as well as a caste certificate.

The list of valid documents, as listed by the Election Commission comprises a government employee card, a birth certificate, passport, an education certificate, a permanent residence certificate, a forest rights certificate, a caste certificate, an NRC document, a Family Register from a local authority, or proof of having been allotted a home by the government.  

'Logical discrepancies', mapping issue

Hearings tackling the scourge of SIR notices, which have been handed to 33 lakh voters, are underway across Delhi. Photo: Antara Baruah

All 585 voters under one BLO in Munirka Village have received notices. It has meant reactivating what is in effect the same process that unfolded previously. While the BLOs upload documents, it is the sub-divisional magistrate who is supposed to make the decision as to who makes it on to the final rolls. This is as the Supreme Court has observed that the notices are “in all probability, machine generated.” 

“People are not aware that they have received notices. We have to call them incessantly. Many people don’t respond, so we have to go to their homes,” this BLO said.

In R.K. Puram, the constituency under which the Munirka area falls, 37.4% of voters have received notices on issues including both ‘logical discrepancies’ and ‘mapping’. Another BLO in the same area, who has approximately the same number of voters allotted to him, said that 50% of those under him had received notices.

There is a certain futility to it all, which both citizens and BLOs are too aware of. The BLOs attempt to assuage the doubts and fears of their voters, and instruct them on which documents they need, but ultimately tell them to carry whatever they have.

Karan, a 25-year-old resident of Munirka who works as a sales assistant in a neighbourhood clothing store, has spent two days shuffling between hearing centres in the area – submitting documents for his entire family. His family didn’t fill the initial enumeration process because they were in their village in Uttar Pradesh’s Nawabganj, caring for his middle brother who had been hospitalised.

“Maine sabka kar liya hai [I’ve done everyone’s], par apne ka pata nahi hai [but I’m not sure about mine],” he said, laughingly. Karan doesn’t have his birth certificate, nor a class 10 certificate. 

Meanwhile, in South-East Delhi’s Badarpur, 44.2% of voters have received notices, making it the highest in Delhi. According to the O Block BLO Poonam Saini, nearly all of them are due to failed mapping. 

Sixty-five-year-old Lalan Pandey is mystified. He has lived in Delhi since 1990, and has built a home in Badarpur, where he has got his children married. He has voted in every election since he moved here. What has prevented his name from being cleared, he said, is his inability to use technology. 

“I couldn’t find my name on the rolls. How can I keep searching on the computer?” he said. “I looked at list after list.” 

“Now what? Will they send us to Pakistan?” he asks. 

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