“How do I prove ‘Sonu’ is Shariq Khan?”

At Khatauli, 40 km from Muzaffarnagar on the Grand Trunk Road, I see a huddle of men holding identical-looking papers. They have a harried look about them, like the ‘affected parties’ I’m after. “Have to get off,” I wave frantically at the bus conductor. The driver of this UP State Transport Corporation bus I’m on is unusually obliging, and I’m allowed to alight in the middle of the highway.

I’m in luck. The huddle, as I’d imagined, is made up of voters who have come to meet their Booth Level Officers (BLOs). They all have questions about the SIR enumeration forms that have become, for many, the unavoidable gateway to re-establishing their legitimacy as Indian citizens.

The culvert is a convenient meeting point, a familiar location for people who live in this area. To have found both voters and BLOs in the same place at the same time is another stroke of luck. But they all look preoccupied and have no time for busybody reporters. “Go to Kassaban,” one of them says, throwing a sideways glance.

I hover quietly. After a few minutes, Intezar, he of the sideways glance, turns to me to say that more than 600 Muslims living in Kassaban in Khalapar, Muzaffarnagar, were struck off the electoral rolls in 2002–03. They’ve been asking ever since that their names be restored, but no luck for them yet.

Now that a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is being conducted in Uttar Pradesh (from 4 November to 4 December), they are even more anxious to enrol as voters. However, since their names did not figure in the electoral roll of 2002–03, the BLOs do not seem to have pre-printed enumeration forms for them. They may have to wait for a special drive to enrol new voters, says Arif, still clinging to hope.

Muslims in Muzaffarnagar and Khatauli, roughly 150 kilometres from Delhi, are an anxious lot. They’ve heard that Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has directed every district administration to ready detention centres for illegal migrants (his preferred term for them is the more derisive ‘ghuspaithiye’).

In one of the viral videos doing the rounds, Union home minister Amit Shah is heard fulminating against these supposed infiltrators and the government’s resolve to identify and deport them. They do not know if the video is fake or authentic but they have saved it on their phones nevertheless.

Pervez and Inam move closer. They nod when Arif says that Muslims have been on tenterhooks since 2014, but their vague sense of being marked has now become a terror of losing whatever they have—their land, their homes… and many dread the possibility of being sent to detention centres or even deported. The most vulnerable are those who own nothing, and there is an edge of desperation in their attempt to get on those electoral rolls.

The desperation is palpable. They are mobbing the BLOs, pestering them on the phone, complaining that the BLOs do not answer calls. The BLOs also plead helplessness — too many callers to entertain each one individually, they say.

Not just the people anxious to get on those rolls, even BLOs are annoyed that the Election Commission is sending enumeration forms in random batches. There are households where only some adults have received their forms while the rest are still waiting. They are suspicious when BLOs tell them their forms haven’t come. Ward councillor Naushad and Samajwadi Party leader Shariq Khan agree there are far too many who haven’t received forms yet. What if the forms never arrive?

“What an irony!” Shariq Khan, who was listening in, says with a wry smile. “High net worth Indians are giving up their citizenship and settling abroad while the poorest Indians are queuing up to prove their citizenship.”

The ECI could have set up a call centre to handle questions and a help desk to explain things, he says. Instead, it has outsourced the job to political parties. Even the BLOs have not been trained well, says Arif; they are often unable to explain to voters which columns to fill — there are separate columns for 2003, post-2003 and pre-1987.

Shariq seems to have a finger on the pulse of the problem. “It is not unusual for people to be known by two names,” he points out. There are adults who change their names for “various reasons”; what he doesn’t say is that one of those reasons is to avoid being marked.

“Take my case. In the 2003 electoral roll, I was registered as ‘Sonu’, the name by which my family members, neighbours and friends know me. But every subsequent document I acquired carries my full name: Shariq Khan. How do I prove that Sonu is Shariq Khan?” The BLOs have no answer.

Later in the day, I meet Tanzeem. I tell him about Shariq Khan’s predicament and ask if there are others who face similar difficulties. He chuckles and says there’s confusion not just over names, but EPIC numbers too. People were issued different EPIC numbers at different times while correcting names, spellings and addresses (a very common error), and are now discovering that in many cases, the EPIC numbers in the 2003 rolls were different from what they have now. Which EPIC number should they fill in? That’s a common dilemma, says Tanzeem.

Manoj Kumar, a junior high school teacher, is supervising the work of seven BLOs in Khatauli. This time, he is being paid Rs 18,000 per annum for the job. Each BLO is paid Rs 12,000. This, for workdays that usually start at 8.00 am and end at 10.00 pm or even later.

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Incredulous, I ask: “Monthly or yearly?”. It’s a yearly payment, he says. Still not sure I’ve heard right, I ask: “Does this mean BLOs are being paid Rs 1,000 per month for this extra work, while he, as their supervisor, receives an additional Rs 500? Manoj Kumar shrugs — he has other problems on his mind.

Although the BLOs have distributed the forms they have received, the filled-up forms are slow in coming back. Meeting every voter in person is not feasible because many leave home early for work, some going as far as Delhi. Notices are being slapped on houses where nobody was found when the BLO visited.

While Manoj was hopeful of finishing the work by 4 December — the ECI deadline — he is worried because only about a fifth of distributed forms had come back by 22 November, when we spoke.

Mohd. Naushad, who lives in an area known as Lal Mohammad in Khatauli, approaches the supervisor. He is not sure which of the seven BLOs working under Manoj Kumar he is dealing with. Only five of the 12 members of voting age in his extended family have received forms. When will the rest get theirs?

Manoj Kumar is not able to help. “We’ve received only five forms from the Commission; I have no information on the others,” he tells Naushad. A bit hesitantly, he volunteers the information that there will be special drives after the final list is issued in February 2026 — to enlist those left out.

BLO Gopal Sharma, a primary school teacher, confides that voters are finding it difficult to locate their names on earlier lists. In some cases, the booths have disappeared while in others, booth numbers have changed. Members of the same family find themselves listed at different booths.

Most voters don’t know which ‘part’ of the list (each booth has four or five ‘parts’) their names figure in — and that is one of the fields they must fill in the forms. It’s time-consuming and Gopal Sharma freely admits that the exercise is too rushed.

Is he under a lot of pressure? Big sigh. And then he says he has to collect a hundred forms every day and upload them online before the end of the day. Have his duties as BLO affected his teaching? The question irritates him. He says he has to go to school to mark attendance every morning; he even tries to take a class or two before venturing out for the SIR exercise.

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The urgency to enrol is much more visible in Muslim localities. Hindus are somehow at ease and local wits are heard saying that if 10 per cent Muslims find their names missing in the rolls, there’ll be three times as many Hindus missing from the list.

One BLO even admitted that they’ve been asked not to waste their time in Hindu localities. People like Yashpal, whom I saw enquiring about the missing form for his son, are not unduly worried. “Ho jayega,” he simply said.

In contrast, Mohd. Iqbal (70), who lives in Lal Mohammed, is frantic. He has been chasing the BLO for the past eight days but has failed to hand over his form. “The BLO is a good man but what can the poor fellow do? Every day, he tells me to see him the next day.”

A group of women in niqab are impatiently telling Ghazala, a BLO, to fill up their forms faster. Some complain they’ve been waiting too long for their turn. Others want to know whether they’ve got their photographs right. Is it true that in the photographs, their ears, and not just their face, should be visible?

Ghazala is in her sixties but looks older. Her hands tremble and her eyesight is not so good. She peers at the forms and laboriously fills in the details given by the women. Will she be able to upload the forms on her own? I wonder.