Delhi SIR: Details of most high-profile voters verified, names cleared for final rolls

Details of most prominent voters in Delhi who received notices during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise have now been verified through field checks, and their names have been kept for inclusion in the final electoral roll, poll officials said on Thursday.

Those who were issued notices included ex-Deputy Prime Minister and BJP veteran LK Advani, former Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, and several other well-known figures from different fields.

Officials said most of them were served notices over discrepancies in their enumeration forms. According to officials, most such notices were issued because the voters were marked as "unmapped with last SIR" in Delhi in 2002.

Most of these prominent voters are from the New Delhi Assembly constituency. Over the past few days, teams of poll officials, including booth-level officers, visited them to verify their details using the supporting documents required by the Election Commission.

After the verification, officials said their names were kept for inclusion in Delhi's final electoral rolls, which are to be published on November 4.

Under the Election Commission's instructions, notices were issued to members of the judiciary, public representatives, holders of declared offices, and personalities from fields such as arts, culture, journalism, sports and public service whose names, flagged in the electoral database, did not appear in the draft roll published on August 31. Officials said this was done so that the required documents could be collected from them during the claims and objections phase.

Officials said more than 97 lakh electors figure in the draft electoral roll, while around 33.13 lakh electors have been identified for notices over discrepancies in their enumeration forms. A large number of these cases involve voters whose details could not be matched with the electoral roll prepared during the previous SIR in 2002.

The office of the Delhi chief electoral officer has said that receiving a notice does not mean a voter's name will be deleted from the electoral roll, and that no name can be removed without giving the elector an opportunity to be heard and passing a proper speaking and appealable order.- Ends(With inputs from PTI)