Delhi voter list final roll pushed to November 4 over polling station reset

The Election Commission has revised the schedule for the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Delhi, pushing the publication of the final voter list to November 4 from the earlier date of October 27. Officials said the extension was needed on technical grounds, including the rationalisation of polling stations.

This is the third revision of the Special Intensive Revision schedule in Delhi since the exercise began on June 30 with door-to-door distribution of enumeration forms among voters. Under the revised schedule, the draft electoral rolls will now be published on August 31 instead of August 24, according to a statement from the office of the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer citing an Election Commission letter.

The period for filing claims and objections by voters whose names are left out of the draft rolls has also been changed. Earlier, this was to run from August 24 to September 23. It will now be open from August 31 to September 30. Poll officials will dispose of these claims and objections from August 31 to October 29, instead of the earlier schedule of August 24 to October 22.

Officials said the extension was necessitated by the rationalisation of polling stations, with the Election Commission requiring that each polling station should have a maximum of 1,200 electors. The Special Intensive Revision is being carried out on the basis of Delhi's pre-SIR voter database, under which there were 1.45 crore electors when the electoral rolls were frozen on June 16. A senior official said, "Based on the pre-SIR data, there are some polling stations where the number of electors is more than 1,200. The district election officers have sent proposals for revision and, once these are approved, voters will have to be tagged to the newly created polling stations in the IT system." Rationalisation or rearrangement of polling stations was earlier to be completed on August 17, but has now been extended to August 24. "The Commission will take about four to five days to give approval, and the IT process will take another four to five days. That is why the deadline has been extended," the officer said.

In the door-to-door voter verification exercise in Delhi, more than 47 lakh voters, or 33 per cent of the total 1.45 crore, were marked as "uncollectable" because their enumeration forms were not digitised. These voters will be removed from the electoral rolls to be published on August 31. Booth-level officers distributed enumeration forms during the house-to-house verification exercise between June 30 and August 17, and more than 67 per cent of the forms submitted by voters were digitised and uploaded on the Election Commission's SIR mobile application. Voters in the absent and shifted category will be able to file applications during the claims and objections phase for inclusion in the final electoral rolls to be published on November 4.

In sum, the Election Commission has extended key dates for Delhi's voter list revision exercise, mainly to complete polling station rationalisation, while keeping August 31 for the draft rolls and November 4 for the final electoral rolls.