New Delhi: As Delhi grapples with lakhs of deletions from the draft electoral roll, questions about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) have only got louder.Amid complaints, reservations and promises of 100% door-to-door coverage, TOI visited around 600 houses in Kirari, Govindpuri and Shalimar Bagh – residential pockets that have a high tenant and migrant population – and found that the coverage during the exercise has been patchy. Many BLOs are calling residents to a common point instead of going door to door. Some have contacted those receiving notices for logical discrepancies, but some problems seem beyond their control.
Naresh, 32, an autorickshaw driver (PIC) , said the SIR process for his family had been completed, but he had been asked to submit documents after receiving notices from EC. He said he submitted the same documents as his family members during enumeration, but only he received a notice for being unmapped to the 2002 SIR. He shifted permanently to Delhi from Bihar in 2015 after his parents died. “I got a notice as I did not know how to find my family’s names in the 2002 electoral roll. “Many of them moved to Delhi in 2017 and have been staying here since then.
Because they frequently changed accommodation and had fewer documents establishing their current address, residents also said tenants were particularly vulnerable to being left out. Some residents said BLOs had visited repeatedly and completed the process, others reported no one had visited them.
BLOs in all three areas said enumeration and verification work was over and corrections and replies to notices were being processed. My wife and brother, however, have been included in the draft roll despite submitting the same documents as me,” he said. Preeti, who runs a shop in the lane, said a large number of residents were tenants who had been living in Delhi for several years, but were facing difficulties establishing their connection with the city through older documents. They do not have any documents, except Aadhaar cards, linking them to,” she said. Some said the only document they currently had showing their Delhi address was their Aadhaar card. The BLO, who lives in Rohtak and travels to Delhi for the exercise, said he had been working on SIR for months. He said he reports to the area every day and waits at the RWA president’s house for residents to approach him. The work, he said, was largely complete, with remaining cases being dealt with through corrections and verification.
For people living in rented accommodations in Delhi, some for several years, SIR has thrown up a problem beyond paperwork: some landlords are reluctant to let them use the rented address for voter registration, leaving residents struggling to establish their connection with the city. The ground experience, however, was not uniform. During its visits, TOI spoke to hundreds of residents, as well as BLOs, to understand how the process is working for them, or not, on the ground. They have documents from their villages and towns in other states, but those are not being accepted here. Her name is also missing from the draft roll.