Delhi SIR Exclusions Exceed Winning Margin In 68 Of 70 Assembly Seats

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Delhi’s electoral rolls has triggered concerns over voter inclusion after an audit found that 47.27 lakh electors were classified as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate (ASDD). The number is higher than the winning margin in 68 of the 70 Assembly constituencies in the 2025 Delhi election.

The audit by the Sabar Institute and Voter Adhikar Manch was based on records published by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer. It said Delhi had 1.56 crore electors on January 31, 2025, when the Assembly election was held, while the roll stood at 1.45 crore by June 30, 2026, when the SIR began.

The SIR was undertaken to improve the accuracy of electoral rolls by identifying dead, permanently shifted, duplicate and untraceable voters, while ensuring eligible citizens remain included. However, activists have raised concerns over the scale of exclusions and the possibility that genuine voters could be wrongly removed.

Of the 47.27 lakh electors identified as ASDD, 31.59 lakh were classified as permanently shifted, 11.73 lakh as untraceable or absent, 2.82 lakh as dead and 1.41 lakh as duplicate or enrolled elsewhere. The audit also reported that 11.03 lakh names were deleted before the SIR, including 3.39 lakh deletions in April 2026.

Exclusion rates exceeded 40 per cent in more than 10 constituencies, with Tughlakabad recording the highest rate at 47.83 per cent, followed by Okhla and R K Puram.

The audit highlighted concerns over third-gender voters, with 577 of 1,267 electors from this category deleted, a deletion rate of 45.5 per cent, compared with 37.5 per cent overall.

A house-to-house verification in Mangolpuri also reportedly found more than 450 voters present at their addresses despite being listed as ASDD, while over 500 others were reportedly missing from both the draft roll and ASDD list. Similar complaints have since emerged from residents who say they were incorrectly marked dead or omitted.

Activists Yogendra Yadav and Anjali Bharadwaj questioned whether such large-scale exclusions could affect public confidence in the 2025 election outcome. They stressed that the figures do not by themselves establish that the election result was incorrect, but argued that every disputed deletion should be independently verified.

The Voter Adhikar Manch has demanded restoration of wrongly excluded voters, individual notice and hearings, an extension of the claims-and-objections period and constituency-wise ASDD data. It has also called for booth-level assistance in vulnerable settlements and withdrawal of the Delhi SIR.