As India rewrites voter rolls, fight over who gets to vote reaches streets

Opposition lawmakers from 19 parties set out from Parliament on October 6 to march on the Election Commission of India and demand that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign. Police stopped them at barricades and briefly detained several, among them Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. Student groups and the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party have joined the protests.

At issue is the Special Intensive Revision, the ECI's recheck of the names on India's electoral rolls. It has left about one in seven names off draft rolls since 2025. In Delhi, the share is nearly a third, the highest of any large state or Union Territory: more than 47.5 lakh electors did not carry onto the draft roll published on August 31, according to the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi.

The day before the march, the Supreme Court asked Kumar, the ECI, and the Union government to answer petitions challenging decisions taken in the revision. Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said the court had not approved any change to Form 6.

Form 6 is how a voter in Delhi whose name is missing from the draft roll asks to be added, much as a first-time voter would. That window now runs to October 30, and the final roll is due on December 4. A voter whose name survived, but could not be linked to an older roll, waits for a notice, then a hearing before an election officer, with documents that prove who they are and, for some, who their parents were.

WHAT'S NEW?

The petitions say the two other Election Commissioners objected in writing to about 14 SIR decisions; the ECI has said their letters concerned an officer on deputation, not policy. Opposition leaders say many of those struck off are minority voters. The ECI rejects allegations of wrongdoing and says the revision removes dead, shifted and duplicate electors. Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Sambit Patra accused the Opposition of trying to create "an atmosphere of anarchy".

WHY IT MATTERS

Final electoral rolls decide who can vote in parliamentary and assembly elections, and a name left off a draft roll has to be claimed back. In Delhi, lakhs on the draft are flagged by CEO Delhi. The Supreme Court hears the petitions again next week.

IN NUMBERS

* 17.1 per cent: electors left off draft rolls in Phase 3 across 17 states and Union Territories

* 12.3 per cent: the same share in Phases 1 and 2 across 13 states and Union Territories

IN-DEPTH

Among the states and Union Territories with at least one crore electors before the revision, six in Phase 3 left out more than 15 per cent of names: Delhi, Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jharkhand, and Haryana. In Phases 1 and 2, two did: Uttar Pradesh, at 18.7 per cent, and Tamil Nadu.

Inside Delhi, the share ranged from 16.5 per cent in Rohini to 47.8 per cent in Tughlakabad. Six of the 10 constituencies with the highest shares are in the South East district: Tughlakabad, Okhla, Kasturba Nagar, Kalkaji, Badarpur, and Jangpura. By number, Burari had the most names left off, nearly 1.7 lakh (39.2 per cent), followed by Okhla, with more than 1.6 lakh (45.2 per cent).

CEO Delhi's report counts nearly 13.8 lakh electors "with No Mapping" and more than 19.3 lakh "having Logical Discrepancies". The report does not say whether the two counts overlap, so they cannot be added.

BIG PICTURE

Nagaland published its draft roll on September 20, Tripura's is due on December 12, three more have not been announced, and the ECI ordered a Special Revision, not the SIR, for Assam on November 17, 2025.

The figures count names left off and leave out new voters added since; they cannot show who was left off. The ECI stopped publishing the gender of flagged voters in the Phase 3 lists of at least six states.

WHAT THEY SAID

On October 5, the ECI called Rahul Gandhi's post on Form 6 misleading. It said its June 24, 2025 order for the SIR in Bihar was unanimous and that the Supreme Court upheld it on May 27 this year, and that it also upheld the Form 6 declaration.