The devil in the electoral rolls

In December 2024, digital media outlet Newslaundry published a three-part report on the deletion of voters from electoral rolls in three Lok Sabha constituencies—Meerut and Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh and Chandni Chowk in Delhi. The survey was conducted over three months after Lok Sabha results were declared on 4 June.

The Newslaundry team led by Sumedha Mittal spoke to voters whose names had been deleted, to booth-level officers (BLOs) deployed to knock on doors to crosscheck claims of change of address or death and to Election Commission officials. The reports, which have been up on the website for more than three weeks, seem to have elicited no rebuttal from the Election Commission despite the damning details they contain.

In Meerut, the team discovered voter cards with the address given as ‘Uttar Pradesh, Jhuggi or Naya’—86 such on voter lists at booth #305 of Meerut Cantonment. In the same booth, around 240 voters are registered with RHA Colony as their address. The colony, however, does not exist.

Vikas Chaudhary, postman at the head post office in Meerut Cantonment told the team, “You’re right—RHA Colony does not exist… bogus voters have become a big problem across Meerut. A couple of months back, I was tasked with distributing new voter cards sent by the EC, but had to dump thousands of them at the local election office as I could not find their addresses.”

Another report noted: ‘Three generations of Amjad’s family live in the dense cluster of houses known as Haveli Azam Khan in the Chandni Chowk constituency. The neighbourhood is walking distance from Delhi’s historic Jama Masjid… 23 members of the family are registered voters at polling booth #10. But during the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, Amjad discovered that he was among the 20 people from his family who had been struck off the voters list on the pretext that they had shifted residence.’ 

“This is the first time we faced this,” Amjad, 55, told Newslaundry. The most frustrating thing was learning that they’d been deleted on polling day. “When we first went to booth #10, they told us they could not find our name in the voters’ lists, so we should check another booth in Jama Masjid. From there, we were sent to another booth… we visited five to six booths. And then finally, the reason given was that probably during the house-to-house survey, the BLO could not find us at home, so she struck off our names.” 

The report states: ‘Amjad is among 36,815 voters who were deleted in 1,377 booths across the Lok Sabha constituency of Chandni Chowk… many of these voter list revisions were in violation of the Election Commission’s norms’.

At his last press conference as Chief Election Commissioner on 7 January, Rajiv Kumar dismissed all allegations of largescale addition or deletion of names from electoral rolls. “India is a gold standard of elections,” he said. “All parties have the right to appoint booth-level agents (BLAs) to participate in the revision process… all claims and objections are shared with all political parties and no deletions are carried out without the statutory Form 7, the application form available online for filing objections to include or delete voters from the electoral roll.”

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Hours earlier on the same day, Sumedha Mittal posted that the deletion rate was 24 per cent in one of the booths in Chandni Chowk. 'I found 147 cases of wrongful deletions. Take the case of Nafees Ahmad and his wife Saira Bano. They’ve been voters for decades [and] had voted in the 2022 Delhi municipal elections. But ahead of the 2024 polls, their names were deleted. The voter list claimed Nafees was dead [and] Bano had shifted home. I found this to be false… during my field survey in Jama Masjid, I found wrongful deletions in nearly every second Muslim household.

'Booth-level officers admitted to the errors, explaining that some names were removed because voters’ homes were found locked. When we asked the Election Commission why Chandni Chowk had a higher deletion rate, they claimed it was due to a large population of migrant labourers and slum dwellers. […] Furthermore, all 147 voters whose names were wrongfully deleted reported that they [had] never received any notice prior to the deletions. They only found out when they went to vote.’

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In his presser on 7 January, the CEC made no mention of the complaint filed by Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, alleging the deletion of 20,000 Yadav/ Muslim voters in each of UP’s 403 constituencies before the 2022 assembly elections.

Officials said the Samajwadi Party was asked to submit documentary proof as there was no provision in law for an electoral roll based on caste or religion. Akhilesh Yadav claimed his party had submitted proof with several thousand sworn affidavits but had not heard from the Commission in the past two years.

In December 2024, Maharashtra Congress leaders claimed that a large number of voters had been arbitrarily deleted from the electoral rolls after the Lok Sabha election, and around 10,000 voters added in every assembly constituency.

In the words of the letter to the EC: ‘Maharashtra witnessed an unprecedented increase of an estimated 47 lakh voters being added to the electoral roll between July 2024 [and] November 2024  […] It is significant to note that out of the 50 assembly constituencies where there was an average increase of 50,000 voters, the ruling regime and its allies won from 47.’

They claimed to have raised the issue a month before polling day but no action was taken. They also cited the FIR registered by a voter registration officer at Dharashiv cyber police station against a large number of fake voter registrations in Tuljapur assembly seat.

The district electoral officer (DEO) of New Delhi conceded the allegation made by AAP parliamentarian Sanjay Singh that two applications were filed on 25 and 26 December 2024 to delete his wife’s name from the voter list. The election officer reported: 'Upon field verification, the booth-level officers found her [Mr. Singh’s wife] residing at the given address, and both Form 7 applications were rejected. Additionally, an FIR was lodged against the objectors for wrongful filing of Form 7.'

Arvind Kejriwal, who is contesting from the New Delhi constituency, claimed that applications had been filed since mid-December to delete the names of 5,000 voters.

Most of the objectors seeking deletion of Muslim voters in Muslim localities seemed to be non-Muslims. The forms shared with BLOs in Delhi do not carry addresses, just the first names of the objectors. With practically anybody able to object online under assumed identities, how are door-to-door checks being conducted, and what action has been taken against fake objectors?

The DEO held that according to the guidelines of the Election Commission, the summary of Form 7, including the names of both objectors and objectees, is shared on a weekly basis with all recognised political parties. This information is uploaded on the official website of CEC Delhi for public access. Mere submission of Form 7 does not lead to deletions.

Even if that were true, can the ECI put the onus of ensuring the veracity of the electoral rolls on voters and political parties?