Flagging “wrongful deletions” in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls , the Congress on Monday (October 19, 2026) demanded that the “unconstitutional” process be stopped immediately and that all voters who were illegitimately deleted be restored to the voters’ list.
Vast majority of deletions in the disastrous SIR process have been in the ASDD category: Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate. The BJP and its unofficial spokespersons are using this to defend SIR as ‘cleaning the voter rolls’. How many of them are genuine voters being denied their right to vote? Many wrongfully deleted voters are unaware of these camps and have not been contacted by their Booth Level Officers (BLOs). It should not be civil society but the ECI itself that is clearing up the mess created by its disastrous SIR. The illegal and unconstitutional SIR process must be stopped immediately. All illegitimately deleted voters must be restored to the electoral rolls. Ramesh demanded.
Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh shared the screenshot of a media report which claimed that at least 100 voters from two polling booths in Delhi’s Okhla constituency were found to have been wrongly classified as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate (ASDD) during the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The report cited a public audit covering 258 households over seven days. Over 9 crore voters have been deleted across the country in these 2 categories alone.
But a public audit by civil society organisations in Delhi exposed the widespread wrongful deletions taking place in the name of “ASDD”. They found at least 100 voters in just 2 polling booths who had been wrongly deleted under “ASDD” – most in the Shifted or Absent categories. Reports also expose the reality of the “special camps” and door-to-door visits promised by the Election Commission of India in its various damage-control Press Notes. Ramesh said. Last week, the Congress had termed the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) “illegal and unconstitutional” and demanded that the exercise be frozen and the names of all legitimate voters restored to the electoral roll.
