New Delhi: Residents of a jhuggi settlement in Delhi’s Bela Estate who had filed applications to get their names included in the electoral roll after being excluded from the draft list said their homes were demolished on September 25, days after election officials visited the area to verify their addresses.The demolition began around 6 AM, residents said, with police personnel surrounding the settlement as bulldozers moved in to pull down the makeshift structures where they had been living.“We woke up to the loud noise of bulldozers and police surrounding our tenements,” said Rekha Devi, a resident who filmed the demolition on her phone. “The police have been here since 6 AM. We have no clue what the plan of this government is.”This is not the first time residents of Bela Estate faced demolitions.Residents of Bela Estate take videos as authorities arrive to demolish their makeshift homes. Photo: Screengrab, by arrangementQuestioning the promises of the government, Devi asked, “Are these the kind of homes the Narendra Modi government promised us? Are these the homes that Rekha Gupta, the Delhi chief minister, promised us? Is this the kind of development they want?”The residents had been trying to get back on the electoral roll after a large-scale exclusion during Delhi’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR).Before the SIR, the polling part covering the Bela Estate settlement, part 33 of Chandni Chowk Assembly constituency, had 729 registered voters. The Wire has reported that when the draft electoral roll was published on August 31, only one name remained, with 728 voters – 99.8% – excluded.The Delhi election authorities attributed the exclusions to the changing physical status of the area. According to the Electoral Registration Officer’s office, agricultural activities in the area were discontinued in 2021, while the dwelling units there were demolished in 2022-23. This, the ERO’s office said, had substantially changed the physical and residential status of the area since the preparation of the last electoral records. During the SIR, booth-level officers found that the electors were no longer residing at the addresses recorded in the electoral roll and as a result, placed them in the ASDD – Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate – list.However, residents disputed this account, saying they never left Bela Estate but had simply moved into makeshift shelters nearby after the 2022-23 demolitions. Some said they had voted from the area in the 2024 Lok Sabha and 2025 Delhi Assembly elections as well.Attempt for re-enrolmentDespite the challenges, the exclusion itself did not prevent the residents from seeking re-enrolment. According to the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer’s office, eligible people whose names were absent from the draft roll could apply for inclusion through Form 6 during the claims and objections period, which runs until September 30.Kamal Lal, a local activist who has been helping residents with their electoral-roll claims, said election officials had asked residents who were still living in the area to establish their current addresses.On September 16, he said, 462 residents submitted Form 6 applications seeking inclusion in the electoral roll, giving their current address in the settlement, according to residents and reporting from the area. On September 18, election officials visited the settlement to verify the addresses submitted in the applications.“They came here and asked the people who were living here after the SIR,” Lal said. “People filled Form 6 and gave this as their address.”Yet, their settlement now stands partly demolished.A noticeDays ahead of the demolitions, the Delhi Development Authority had issued a notice asking residents to vacate the area by September 23. The Wire has reviewed this notice. It said an anti-encroachment drive would be carried out on September 24 and 25 in the Yamuna floodplain near Rajghat, citing a January 13, 2015, order of the National Green Tribunal. The notice described the structures as encroachments and warned residents that they would be responsible for losses caused by the demolition if they failed to vacate the area. The DDA’s action has taken place while residents are still within the claims and objections period for the draft electoral roll, leaving them with addresses that have no homes.The demolitionLal said the demolition went beyond pulling down the makeshift structures in which some residents were living. “They have even demolished the jhuggis where people were living and dug up the ground so that people cannot erect new homes or new tenements here.”“We don’t understand what the government is trying to do. Homes are being demolished, people are being displaced and their votes being axed too. Where does the government see the poor? Do they want to completely exclude the poor from public life?” Lal asked.According to the election commission’s Delhi SIR guidelines, people who have shifted from their previous residence can apply for inclusion at their new location during the claims and objections period.But for the Bela Estate residents, the latest demolition raises an existential question: how will election officials verify the ordinary residence of people whose current settlement has now been partly demolished? The question is particularly significant because the earlier exclusion of the 728 out of 729 voters was itself linked by election officials to an apparent physical disappearance of the homes at their registered addresses, based on the earlier roll.The residents have already supplied new addresses in an attempt to establish where they currently lived. Now, that address is changing again.Many families like Devi’s are still picking the remains of their lives and homes from the debris. For them, today, the immediate concern is not only whether they will be able to vote or not – it is also where they will wake up tomorrow.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.