New Delhi: Voter Adhikar Manch, a citizen collective, has sought a meeting with the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi and demanded his responses to concerns raised by Delhi’s working class residents regarding the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls. In a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi Ashok Kumar, the organisation has raised seven demands based on feedback from across the city’s underprivileged and working-class neighbourhoods.“Primarily, the process of enumeration has been erratic, especially for the disadvantaged, workers and women. Some BLOs [Booth Level Officers] are distributing enumeration forms less efficiently than others,” Dr Akash Bhattacharya, co-founder of Voter Adhikar Manch and a lawyer and historian told The Wire. “While residents of housing societies can press the BLO to be more effective, the poor fail to do that because they lack adequate information about the process,” he said.As a result, the topmost problem reported to the Manch is people saying “they have never seen their BLO and have never received an enumeration form at all”. For many who did get this form, the challenge was getting “no further help from the BLOs, who themselves have indicated vagueness and lack of clarity regarding the SIR procedure”.The demands raised in the letter are based on several helplines set up by the Voter Adhikar Manch across Delhi districts. Other organisations working in the field have shared feedback they received on the process too. The Voter Adhikar Manch also set up help desks which have received around 50 calls per day with complaints. Residents’ experiences with the SIR in jhuggi-jhopri clusters and neighbourhoods have been included from a variety of sources.Also read: ‘Conduct an Open, Online Public Hearing’: Forum for Electoral Integrity to NHRC on SIR IrregularitiesThe complaints have been listed in the letter to the CEO and the organisation is yet to get a response. A copy of the letter has also been sent to the Chief Justice of India. The SIR exercise is unfolding under the partial supervision of the Supreme Court, which has given the process a go-ahead, while holding that mass exclusion would not be permissible.“Our aim behind sending the letter is to initiate a conversation with the election commission on this issues faced by people. Our understanding is that the SIR process will continue for some time. During the claims and objections stage, we hope to be able to resolve many of the concerns people have raised. If not, we may have to go for a legal challenge against the unfair exclusions,” he said.The letter to the three authorities points out that the SIR process is based on a design assumption that was never stated openly, but still exists, which is that the elector is “literate, has a smartphone, can read a pre-printed form, can check her own status on a portal and can recognise an error in her own entry. In the localities where we work, that assumption is false for a very large number of people”.The result is that errors in the enumeration form, if any, are discovered only after they have been submitted. Hence, during the forthcoming stages of the SIR – verification and claims and objections – would be burdensome for citizens, for many already risk beign excluded from the very first stage of the process.A second set of concerns has to do with the enumeration forms “not being generated at all” for many voters. “Their concerned BLOs also told them their form doesn’t exist and their form couldn’t be found online as well,” says the letter.This appears to have happened in large numbers to those who moved residences within the city. “Instead of offering those who have shifted, which is a usual thing for working people, their names were struck off the electoral roll, and they never got a chance to enumerate themselves,” explains Bhattacharya.The letter points out that no notice was served on these people at any address, and none was affixed at their premises before deletion of their names, as per the mandated process. They still have voter ID cards, and discovered their deletion only when they did not get an enumeration form.Reports say that 20% of Delhi voters were not found at their address, while 8% (nearly 12 lakh voters) have been marked for exclusion. Delhi has around 1.45 crore voters.“The proviso to Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 is unambiguous that no entry shall be deleted unless the person concerned has been given a reasonable opportunity of being heard, a mandatory requirement also upheld in the Lal Babu Hussein v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995) judgment of the Supreme Court,” the letter points out. It highlights that those deleted (as having shifted, but without the required verification) were unaware of any “speaking order” that this could happen to them.Also read: How EC Has Quietly Changed Form 6 During SIR, Evading ParliamentA speaking order is a legal (in this case administrative ruling) based on logic and reason – one which explains to potentially affected people that their names would be deleted from the rolls if they shifted, even within the national capital. The BLOs, instead, are simply deleting the names of those who recently moved away from their homes, taking the neighbours’ word for it. This, too, will show up during the claims and objects stage as a heavy burden – for those who actually attempt that process.“And it is not just the working class but older people, women and many others who are facing difficulties due to these deletions,” explained Bhattacharya.”In this population a change of address between 2002 and 2026 is the ordinary condition of existence,” the letter points out.In Delhi, first-time voters must show that their parents or their grandparents were on the 2002 electoral roll. Married women and Delhi’s working class population is the least likely to be able to do that easily, he points out.“The struggle to figure out the exact polling booth in the exact assembly constituency of Delhi where these voters or their parents / grandparents would have voted 24 years ago is harrowing and mind-numbing,” says the letter.By deleting the names of women who have shifted on account of marriage, Bhattacharya explains, the election commission has “written into the electoral roll” the assumption that women’s political identity is an appendage to the household she is born in or married into.Further, when a parent who voted in 2002 at a particular booth, who then moved away, is deleted, their child finds no record of an ancestor on that benchmark voting list, effectively getting excluded themselves.The letter points out that the ECI itself had informed the Supreme Court (Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India (2026), decided on May 27, 2026, that an overwhelming majority of electors would file nothing at all, because they or their parents were [not] traceable to the benchmark roll.“The process thus favours home-owners, not workers and the less advantaged,” says Bhattacharya. In the letter as well, it is pointed out that the Representation of the People Act or the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, does not allow refusal of enumeration of voters if a voter changes their address. “Section 20 of the Act fixes ordinary residence, and not ownership or continuity of address, as the test,” it points out.Also read: ‘Potentially Affecting a Great Number of Muslims’: UN Special Rapporteurs Flag Concerns Over Mass Voter Deletions in SIROne fallout of the chaotic and confusing process has been to force voters to enlist anew using Form 6, which, however, requires them to declare they have never voted before. “The Commission is thus placing lakhs of ordinary people in a position where they must either sign an untrue statement carrying penal consequences, or forfeit the franchise,” the letter says. For voters whose addresses have changed, the requirement is to submit Form 8.The Voter Adhikar Manch has raised 7 demands in response to the growing crisis, which include:That an enumeration form be generated and delivered to every person presently on the roll, irrespective of any change of address, which must not be used as a reason to delete them from the electoral roll.No deletions of those who have shifted addresses without the BLO making three visits as per the rules and no form being marked “uncollectable” on the word of present occupants of a home or neighbour or without the elector being informed.That the Commission clarify in writing, in Hindi and English, to every Electoral Registration Officer, Booth Level Officer and help desk in Delhi, that a change of address is not a ground for fresh registration, that such an elector is at most a Form 8 applicant and never a Form 6 applicant.The burden of justifying deletion must rest on the Electoral Registration Officer and not on the voter – all deletions of existing voters from the last assembly or Lok Sabha election be restored unless a speaking order exists against a particular voter or an objection exists under Form 7.Publication of the full polling-station-wise list of electors marked Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate and of forms marked Uncollectable, not later than seven days before the draft roll, giving voters an early chance to make corrections.That no woman’s name be deleted from her natal address until her entry at the marital address is confirmed, that she be permitted to establish linkage through her natal family’s 2002 entry, and that no marriage certificate be insisted upon.The draft roll is to be published on August 17. The letter seeks action on the first three demands before enumeration closes on August 8.