The Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered officials in areas that completed a voter-roll revision to visit people missing from the new lists and help eligible residents apply for inclusion, amid concerns about exclusions.
Under the Oct. 1 directive, officials must compare rolls from before and after the revision, visit people whose names no longer appear and help eligible applicants submit Form 6. The order applies only where the process is complete. Delhi is still in its draft-roll claims period and falls outside that post-revision drive.
The ECI said Sept. 26 that the revision was complete in 20 states and union territories, while final rolls were pending in 12 others. Those pending decisions mean draft omissions cannot be treated as final exclusions.
The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Delhi, listed 9,753,577 names on its Aug. 31 draft roll, compared with 14,510,299 before the revision. It recorded 4,756,722 uncollected enumeration forms. The office provisionally grouped the associated entries as shifted, absent or other cases; deceased; or duplicate registrations. The largest group also included people who had not returned a form.
Elections specialist Yogendra Yadav estimated that about 130 million names were removed during the revision, NPR reported. NPR identifies Yadav as a critic of the ruling party. His unverified estimate does not establish how many eligible voters remain absent from final rolls.
The commission began the Special Intensive Revision in Bihar in June 2025. It cited migration, urbanization, newly eligible voters and unreported deaths among its reasons for updating the lists, and said Bihar's previous intensive revision was in 2003.
Earlier protests over the voter-roll review centered on concerns that eligible residents were being left out. Kanchan, a Delhi resident who said her name was removed, told NPR she valued the right to vote because “it shows we are citizens.”
Delhi's deadline for claims and objections is Oct. 30. Officials have until Nov. 30 to resolve the notices, claims and objections.
