Delhi’s SIR Update: More Than 1 Lakh Form 6 Applications Cleared Out of 4.56 Lakh

Since the draft electoral rolls were posted on August 31, Delhi’s election machinery has been racing to sort out a mountain of voter‑addition requests – the so‑called Form 6 applications. In the span of just seven weeks, officials say they have already disposed of about 1.15 lakh of the 4,56,913 forms filed.

Form 6 is the form that first‑time voters, people who think their name is missing, or anyone whose details need to be added to the rolls can submit. It’s a lifeline for many aspiring voters, especially youngsters who have just turned 18.

To give you a sense of scale, the draft rolls released on Aug 31 listed 97.53 lakh electors – a sharp drop from the 1.45 crore listed before the revision. Roughly 47.5 lakh names were shuffled into the “Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate” (ASDD) buckets, with about 43.3 lakh marked absent or permanently shifted, 2.82 lakh listed as deceased and another 1.41 lakh flagged as duplicates.

The verification effort hasn’t been uniform across Delhi’s 70 assembly segments. In Okhla, for instance, officials could confirm only 54.6 % of existing voters, a dip they think stems from high migration in that area. R K Puram and Kasturba Nagar fared a little worse – around 44 % verification each. By contrast, Seelampur managed a solid 76.6 % verification rate, while Rohini, Shakur Basti and Mangolpuri posted figures in the low‑80s.

When you drill down to the constituency level, the numbers start to look familiar. Okhla, Kasturba Nagar and Jangpura each saw roughly 2,000 Form 6 applications tossed out, whereas Tughlaqabad, Matia Mahal and R K Puram each recorded about 1,500 disposals. Kalkaji’s tally stood near 1,000 and Babarpur barely crossed the 200‑mark.

Beyond Form 6, the election office is also wrestling with more than 33 lakh notices issued to voters whose records didn’t line up with the 2002 rolls or showed “logical discrepancies” – things like mismatched addresses or name spellings. The good news? Over 80 % of those cases have already been settled, thanks largely to door‑to‑door visits by Booth‑Level Officers (BLOs) who are collecting supporting documents from the ground.

What’s the timeline now? Officials say they will keep a steady flow of special camps and meetings between Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and BLOs until October 30, urging as many people as possible to file their forms. From October 31 to November 30, the focus will shift to simply disposing of pending applications – a sort of clean‑up sprint before the final roll is frozen.

In a recent directive, the Chief Electoral Officer asked BLOs to revisit the 47.5 lakh names knocked out of the draft rolls, confirming each one through personal visits. The idea is to make sure no eligible citizen is left out by mistake.

For those whose Form 6 requests are rejected after the October 30 cut‑off, there’s still a safety net. The procedure used in other states that have already wrapped up their SIR (Sustained Incidence of Revision) will be mirrored here, meaning a fresh chance to apply during the continuous updation process.

Alongside Form 6, the city has also been handling deletions (Form 7) and corrections (Form 8). Between Aug 31 and Oct 20, 14,911 Form 7 applications – requests to delete names – were logged, taking the total to 66,382. Meanwhile, 93,036 Form 8 requests – for correcting details – were received, bringing that tally to 3,53,804.

All eyes now turn to December 4, when the final electoral rolls are slated for publication. That will be the moment Delhi’s voters finally see the definitive list – a list that has been painstakingly pruned, verified and, yes, sometimes debated.