Delhi SIR draft drops 47.56 lakh names, two-thirds marked as shifted

Delhi's draft electoral roll, published on 31 August 2026 after the Special Intensive Revision house-to-house count, holds 97,53,577 names. The roll that went into the exercise on 30 June held 1,45,10,299. The gap is 47,56,722 electors, or 32.8 percent of the previous list.

That is the steepest percentage cut among the states and Union territories that have published SIR 3.0 drafts so far. The national draft, covering most of the third phase, had already removed more than six crore names from a pool of about 36 crore. Maharashtra lost the most people in raw numbers, about 2.06 crore, or 21 percent. Delhi lost the largest share of its own list.

The reasons recorded by the Chief Electoral Officer are not evenly split. A briefing on 1 September put 31.59 lakh of the missing names under "permanently shifted." That is 66 percent of all exclusions. Another 11.73 lakh were marked untraceable or absent. The dead accounted for 2.82 lakh. Duplicates and multiple enrolments accounted for 1.41 lakh. Over 10 lakh of those marked shifted are aged 30 to 39.

The geography is sharper than the citywide average. Tughlakabad recorded the highest share left out, about 47.8 percent. Okhla, held by AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan, dropped 1,63,829 of 3,62,813 electors, or 45 percent, leaving 1,98,984 on the draft. RK Puram was at 44.4 percent. Badarpur, Patel Nagar, Mehrauli, Patparganj and Burari all sat near or above 40 percent. Thirteen of Delhi's 70 Assembly seats lost more than two-fifths of their previous electors.

South East district took the largest absolute hit. Inside that belt, 1,042 booths of the 1,090 where a single reason explained at least 95 percent of deletions used "permanently shifted" as that reason. Those 1,042 booths account for about 4.5 lakh deletions, 4.37 lakh of them classified as shifted.

SC-reserved seats also ran high. Karol Bagh lost 40 percent. Ambedkar Nagar lost 39 percent. Deoli and Kondli each lost 37 percent. Trilokpuri lost 33 percent. Seemapuri and Sultanpur Majra each lost 31 percent. Digitisation of collected forms was lower in Seelampur, Matia Mahal, Babarpur and Mustafabad than in many other seats, which means the draft in those areas rests on a thinner set of completed papers.

CEO Ashok Kumar told reporters that a missing name on the draft is not a final deletion. Form 6, with a declaration and supporting papers, can be filed from 31 August to 30 September. Electoral Registration Officers then have until 29 October to issue notices and dispose of claims. The final roll is scheduled for 4 November.

The sequence matters because Delhi votes on a compressed calendar once the roll is locked. The enumeration window ran from 30 June to 17 August. Booth-level officers were told to collect forms at the address on the old roll. Where nobody answered, the name went into the uncollectable pile and off the draft. That is why the "shifted" label dominates. It is also why the 30-39 age band is so large: that is the group most likely to have changed rented rooms without telling the electoral office.

Opposition parties have already pointed at Okhla, Seelampur and the reserved seats and called the pattern political. The CEO's office has answered with the same sentence each time: no name leaves the final roll without inquiry and notice. That sentence will be tested in September, when the people marked shifted either walk into a form centre with an address proof or stay off the list that will be used the next time Delhi votes.

For the rest of the country the Delhi draft is a preview. If a capital with high literacy and a dense booth network can drop one elector in three at the draft stage, other urban rolls in the remaining SIR states will face the same arithmetic. The claim window, not the draft headline, is where that arithmetic becomes a vote.