Delhi’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has flagged Chief Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu for a possible notice after officials found a mismatch between the name entered on his enumeration form and the name recorded in the voter list.
According to officials cited in the report, Sandhu, a resident of New Moti Bagh and a voter in the Delhi Cantonment Assembly constituency, wrote “Dr SS Sandhu” on his enumeration form. His name appears in the electoral roll as Sukhbir Singh Sandhu. He has not been issued a notice yet but has been identified for one because of the discrepancy.
The local booth-level officer and the area electoral registration officer are expected to examine supporting documents to resolve the difference in the name. Officials said the case falls under the category of voters whose details could not be matched with information in the previous revision of the electoral roll.
The New Delhi district election officer said the mismatch was identified during the process of comparing information supplied in the enumeration forms with the previous SIR voter list. Notices are being issued to voters whose submitted information could not be linked to the earlier roll or where discrepancies were found during the matching exercise.
The process has also affected several prominent political and public figures. Officials said notices have already been sent to former deputy prime minister L K Advani, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and members of his family. The report did not provide details of the individual discrepancies in each case.
Officials also identified several other people who have either received notices or may receive them shortly. The list includes Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, former Jawaharlal Nehru University vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar, former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung, former NITI Aayog vice-chairperson Arvind Panagariya, Securities and Exchange Board of India chairperson Tuhin Kanta Pandey, former Army chief Upendra Dwivedi and Central Bureau of Investigation director Praveen Sood.
The scale of the exercise is substantially larger than the cases involving public figures. Officials said more than 97 lakh voters were included in the draft electoral roll released after the SIR exercise, while 33.13 lakh notices were issued. Most notices were reportedly linked to information that could not be matched with records from the 2002 SIR.
For voters receiving notices, the next step is document scrutiny by the election authorities. In Sandhu’s case, officials are expected to verify the name variation through the local booth-level officer and electoral registration officer before any decision is taken on the record.
