The Election Commission has been going through Delhi’s voter lists with a fine-tooth comb under this Special Intensive Revision thing they’re calling SIR. And guess whose names popped up on the notice list? L.K. Advani, Manish Sisodia, and Kailash Gahlot, along with a bunch of other familiar faces.
A few days ago the Delhi CEO’s office put out the list of people who got these notices. It came nearly three weeks after they released the draft rolls. Out of the roughly 97 lakh names that made it onto the draft, about 33 lakh had some kind of mismatch or gap. More than 31 lakh notices have already gone out.
Most of the trouble falls into two buckets. One is “no mapping” — meaning the system just couldn’t match the person’s details to the old 2002 voter list. The other is what they call logical discrepancies: names that don’t quite match, age gaps that look odd, that sort of thing.
Advani, who’s 98 now, got the notice along with his daughter Pratibha and his daughter-in-law Geetika. All three are under the no-mapping category. His son Jayant, though, sailed through without any issue. They’re all registered in the New Delhi constituency. Funny thing is, Advani was Home Minister back when the last big revision happened in 2002. Even his name didn’t line up properly with those old records.
Kailash Gahlot is in the same boat. He used to be an AAP minister, now he’s a BJP MLA. His notice also says no mapping. Same for his wife Moushumi and their elder daughter Jahnavi.
Manish Sisodia got one too. The Commission hasn’t said exactly why in his case. But his wife Seema’s notice mentions a name mismatch on her own details, and their son Meer’s has a problem with the parents’ names listed.
And it’s not just these three. S. Jaishankar, Jagdeep Dhankhar, Election Commissioner S.S. Sandhu, the Foreign Secretary, the CBI Director, the former Army chief — a whole lot of well-known names are on that list. Arvind Kejriwal and his family got notices earlier, and so did Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta.
The CEO’s office has been clear about one thing: getting a notice doesn’t mean your name is getting struck off. They’re just asking people to send in their reply and whatever documents they need so the records can be fixed. Officials will look at each case one by one. They say the whole notice process should be wrapped up by the end of October, and the final voter list is supposed to come out on 4 November.
They’re also making it easier for the bigger names — someone will help collect their papers. For everyone else there are camps running so people can go and sort it out without too much hassle. The full list of notices is up on the CEO’s website and at the district offices if anyone wants to check.
This whole exercise is basically an attempt to clean up lists that haven’t had a thorough going-over since 2002. A lot has changed in twenty-odd years — people move, spellings change, records get patchy. So they’re trying to reconnect the dots or ask for other proof when the old list doesn’t match.
Some people are grumbling about the scale of it and the bother it’s causing. Others say a cleaner list is worth the trouble, and at least everyone gets a chance to explain before anything is final. The Commission keeps repeating that no name will be removed without giving the person a proper hearing and a clear order that can be challenged if needed.
For now, anyone who got a notice — whether it’s Advani or the guy next door — just needs to send in their reply on time. Once that’s done and the checks are finished, we’ll see what the final rolls look like. Until then, it’s a reminder that even the biggest names can end up needing to prove the same details the rest of us do.
Sources: The Statesman, Times of India, Hindustan Times, Business Standard, Indian Express, IBTimes, PTI.
@Rohit Manral
