New Delhi, July 4 (PTI) The anganwadi on the main road in Delhi’s Noor Nagar has become one of the collection points for the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Residents walk in to collect enumeration forms, booth level officers stop by the day, while party workers help people fill out paperwork.
Barely a few lanes away, however, the exercise appears to fade into the background.
In pockets of Shaheen Bagh and Jasola in the Okhla Assembly constituency of southeast Delhi, many residents were either unaware that the month-long voter roll revision had begun in their neighbourhood or knew of it only vaguely, without knowing where forms were being distributed or how the process worked.
The gap, however, is not
necessarily one of documentation, but of information.
For years, migrant families from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal have made these neighbourhoods their home.
They drive cabs, work as domestic helps, stitch garments, run small businesses and take up daily-wage jobs. Many have voted in successive Delhi Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, their voter identity cards carrying local addresses. Yet, in the first week of the SIR exercise, conversations in these neighbourhoods often began with a simple question: “SIR? What is that?” Firoz, who moved to Delhi from Assam around 15 years ago and now lives in a makeshift house in Okhla’s Noor Nagar, had heard that SIR was underway but did not know it had reached his locality.
“If there is a camp, we’ll go. But where is it? Nobody has come to our lane or explained anything,” he said, adding that his family already has voter identity cards, Aadhaar cards, PAN cards and driving licences.
“We know SIR is happening, but we don’t know where,” Firoz said.
Not far away, Bibi Ajmera, who migrated from Bihar’s Purnia around 18 years ago and works as a domestic worker, was hearing about the exercise for the first time.
She recalled voting in Delhi elections and replacing a lost voter identity card with the help of her Aadhaar card at a local government school.
Like many others in the locality, she leaves for work early in the day and returns only by evening. Nobody, she said, had approached her about the ongoing revision.
The contrast is visible within a short walk.
While forms are being distributed from the anganwadi on the main road, awareness becomes patchier inside the densely populated lanes beyond it, where information often travels by word of mouth.
Residents living in nearby concrete houses said announcements about the exercise were being made through mosque loudspeakers. But many said people either did not pay attention to them or did not realise the announcements referred to the voter roll revision.
“The process has just begun. People will gradually become aware,” one resident said.
The SIR exercise began on June 30 and will continue till July 29. During the exercise, BLOs are to provide every elector with two copies of the enumeration form – one to be submitted and another to be retained by the voter as an acknowledgement. No supporting documents are required to be submitted along with the form.
However, residents and local political workers said the outreach has not always been door-to-door.
Anis Khan, a Delhi Block Congress office-bearer in the area, claimed that in several pockets, BLOs were asking residents to collect forms from specific locations such as anganwadis or mosques instead of visiting every household.
He added that practical constraints, including large elector lists, irregular house numbering in some neighbourhoods and the physical challenge of carrying hundreds of forms, have made door-to-door distribution for women BLOs difficult in parts of the area.
The party, he said, has begun conducting its own outreach to bridge the information gap.
“People are coming to our office every day asking where the forms are available, how they have to fill them and whether any documents are required. We are calling BLOs to a common location on weekdays so residents can collect forms and get their queries answered. Our effort is to ensure that no eligible voter’s name is left out simply because they didn’t know about the process,” Khan said.
Every elector must submit the enumeration form for their name to be included in the final electoral roll scheduled to be published on October 7. Electors who do not submit the form will not find their names in the draft electoral roll to be published on August 5, according to the CEO’s office. PTI MSJ KSI KSI
