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New Delhi: Sunita Devi has an Aadhaar card, a PAN card, and a bank passbook. She has lived in Delhi for the last 30 years, having moved here as a young bride from a village in Bihar’s Madhubani district. But none of this is sufficient under Delhi’s ongoing SIR (Special Intensive Revision) process. 

She is one of 33 lakh Delhi voters with a notice from the Election Commission. The notice says that she failed to establish herself, or a relative as a “registered elector,” in reference to the 2002 elections, which is when the SIR was last conducted.

Devi knows her polling booth. It is the MCD School in Munirka. She has voted before.

What she did not know, however, was that she had received a notice. Her son told her that he had received a call, and she duly arrived at the Baradghar, the community hall in Munirka. She was not instructed to carry any documents. The booth level officer (BLO) only told her son that she had to show up.

“Kya musibat hai [what a difficult situation]. I’ve lived here for 30 years. I’m not going to be able to get any other papers,” she said. “My entire family here is now. My house in the village is locked. I can’t speak to the pradhan.”

Sunita Devi waiting to meet her BLO and receive her notice. Photo: Antara Baruah

Across the capital city of Delhi, across class-lines and neighbourhoods, hearings are taking place for those who have received SIR notices, citing either “logical discrepancies” or “no mapping” – in order to make sure that ‘no voter is left behind.’ But what this part of the process exposes is Delhi’s disfigurement, echoing the same inequalities that the electoral system is supposed to disguise. While........

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