Since the Election Commission of India (ECI) initiated the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar in June 2025, followed by a similar exercise across nine states and three Union Territories in October 2025, it has dominated national headlines. In this piece, we recount our personal experiences of trying to find our names in the electoral rolls of 2002-03. This year is important because the SIR forms include a box providing details of the previous SIR, where an elector can enter their own details if they were a voter in the last SIR (in 2002-04) or enter details of a relative who was an elector then.A sample set of twoWe are senior citizens in our late 60s and have voted in several general elections. With due humility, we point out that we are quite well informed and possess extensive knowledge of India’s official processes and digital systems. We do not face any barriers in accessing or using the ECI’s digital framework.It is therefore quite tragic that we have not been able to locate our names in the SIR 2002–03 electoral rolls – the rolls which the ECI is using as a baseline for the present exercise.ECI-Net – a dynamic digital database housing records of nearly one billion voters – could be among the world’s best electoral infrastructures in digital format. Yet, the ECI has not extended the digital facility of searching electoral rolls for SIR 2002-03.The search page adds a disclaimer that the SIR 2002/2003 roll data is published exactly as received from state chief electoral officers, who are solely responsible for preparing and revising the rolls, while the ECI merely hosts the data without alteration.A non-searchable databaseFilling the SIR enumeration form is anything but simple. We downloaded the electoral rolls of the 2002-03 SIR and tried to trace our names.The facility of accessible online search APIs has not been extended to SIR 2002-03. So, we had to recall our constituency, polling booth and even the room number of the polling station. For this, we had to download and go through multiple PDF files containing voter lists of 2002-03.Experience of the first authorThe first author, a professor of computer engineering, moved from (BITS) Pilani (district Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan) to (IIT) Kharagpur (district West Medinipur, West Bengal) in 2001 and remained there until 2015, with a few one-year periods spent in (IIT) Kanpur. During this time, he voted in every general election and every West Bengal assembly election from the Kharagpur Rural assembly constituency. His polling station throughout was the Hijli School in Kharagpur.To search for his name in the SIR 2002 rolls, he had no option but to manually examine several electoral lists of Hijli School in PDF form. The school had seven polling rooms, meaning seven separate lists – each in Bengali and each containing roughly 1,000 voters. Since he cannot read Bengali, he requested several acquaintances to help search for his name. All returned with the same answer: his name was not found.Faced with repeated negative responses, he undertook the task himself. Using Google Meet for live translation assistance, he read through every entry in each list. He repeated this exercise multiple times and even expanded the search to about 15 polling lists in the surrounding area. Astonishingly, his name did not appear anywhere in the SIR 2002 rolls of West Bengal.Assuming his name might not have been deleted from Pilani, he then examined the Pilani electoral lists – seven PDFs for the Vidya Vihar area, all of which were digitally unsearchable. So, he manually scanned each one. He even checked the polling lists from his decade-long stint in Dehradun and his hometown, Pilibhit. Nowhere did his name appear, despite having voted unfailingly in every general and assembly election throughout these years.Experience of the second authorThe second author, an IAS officer, was posted as the vice-chancellor of Jamia Hamdard from 2000 to 2005. He resided in the vice-chancellor’s lodge during this period. He found that the electoral rolls are available only as PDF files, which were not searchable. Unable to recall his exact polling station where he had voted in the elections in that period, he manually scanned multiple lists across several polling stations in the Tughlaqabad constituency in the national capital.The VC lodge of the university did not have a house number. The other houses in the university campus are listed in the 2002-03 electoral roll. So, he did not find his name in the voter list of 2002-03.Possible consequences for a large section of citizensThe above experiences of two senior citizens highlight the profound consequences that ordinary citizens may be facing – through no fault of their own – under a flawed and hurriedly implemented SIR.It will be tragic if the authors are called upon to prove our citizenship due to our inability to find our names in voter lists of 2002-03.Our plight stems from the ECI’s failure in the past to maintain correct voters’ lists and now transferring the responsibility of finding their names in the voter list of 2002-03 to citizens themselves.It is unimaginable why a great Information Technology powerhouse, providing IT support to even the developed nations of the world, cannot provide digital voter lists in which search would be easily possible through name, father’s name and date of birth.It is really sad that the SIR should be causing a lot of stress and mental torture to even well-informed citizens. Those in transferable jobs may be struggling to find their names in 2002-03 voter lists.It is sobering to imagine what millions of ordinary citizens, especially migrants – those without digital literacy, resources and weak documentation – must be experiencing. For them, the embarrassment, distress and mental torture would be far greater.The Election Commission will do well to reform its guidance even at this late stage of the SIR.Rajeev Kumar is a former professor of computer science at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, BITS Pilani, and JNU, and a former scientist at DRDO and DST. Siraj Hussain, a former IAS officer, retired as Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.