Public Audit in Okhla Reveals Scores of Wrongly Deleted Voter Names

UPDATE - follow-up to Delhi SIR: Public audit in two booths find over 100 voters wrongly marked absent, shifted, or dead:

What Happened

At least 100 voters from two polling booths in Delhi's Okhla constituency were wrongly classified as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. A public audit covering 258 households over seven days revealed these errors, with affected residents turning up for a public hearing in the Batla House area on Sunday, October 18, 2026. The event was organised by civil society groups including Jan Sarokar, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Voter Adhikar Manch, and the National Federation of Indian Women. Over 150 voters registered to present their cases to a panel of Supreme Court advocates Nayantara Roy and Sumita Hazarika and transparency activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri. Okhla recorded the second-highest rate of deletions in the draft roll after the SIR phase, with over 67,000 names on the notice list and nearly 1.6 lakh on the ASDD list out of more than 1.85 lakh voters.

Affected Residents

Among those affected was 74-year-old Faiyaz Ahmed, a retired professor who has lived at the same address for over five decades, who was marked untraceable alongside his 62-year-old wife Anjum Ara. Their son, Babu Sardar Khan, stated he had submitted filled forms for both parents to the area's booth-level officer, but only his own name appeared, leaving him to collect Form 6 for fresh enrolment. Another resident, 48-year-old Naeemuddin, lived at his address for 30 years and gave his photo and signature to the BLO, yet was marked permanently shifted. Ravi, 37, discovered through his EPIC ID that he was listed as dead despite having a valid card issued in 2023, compounded by a duplicate entry with a different EPIC number on the same address. Organisers noted that affected citizens were being handed Form 6 and declarations to seek fresh enrolment since volunteers were unauthorised to collect applications directly.

Context

The Election Commission of India conducts periodic revisions of voter rolls to clean up data by removing ineligible entries, but administrative errors during mass verification can mistakenly strip long-term residents of voting rights. All Form 6 applications received by October 30 will be considered for the final voter roll scheduled for publication on December 4.