47 lakh names out; Delhi’s voter audit goes to court
The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the exclusion of about 47.56 lakh names from Delhi’s draft electoral roll. They have not been finally deleted, but the paperwork has already become a constitutional drama.
The draft electoral roll remains open to claims and objections until September 30.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the exclusion of about 47.56 lakh names from Delhi’s draft electoral roll under the Special Intensive Revision. The names were left out of the draft published on August 31, not finally deleted. Claims and objections remain open until September 30, and the final roll is scheduled for November 4. The court date is reported as September 21 by some accounts and September 22 by another; the official listing was not available in the material reviewed.
The draft contains about 97.53 lakh names, against roughly 1.45 crore electors before the exercise. Reports say the excluded forms were marked “uncollectible”, covering categories such as absent, shifted, dead, duplicate and “other”. More than 62,000 Form 6 applications had been filed by September 16. Democracy, at least, still has a claims window.
Petitioners Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, represented by Prashant Bhushan, allege that the Election Commission has not disclosed who received notices or the grounds for the reported “logical discrepancies” and “unmapped” voters. Bhushan said notices concerned about 33 lakh people, a figure not independently confirmed by an official ECI disclosure. The court has agreed to hear the challenge; it has not stayed the process or ordered restoration of the names. The Election Commission’s process now has to explain itself before it asks voters to explain themselves.