Delhi voter list revision has come under scrutiny after Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi claimed that 727 of 728 residents listed in Bela Estate had been removed from the electoral rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. Gandhi raised the issue during a visit to the Yamuna-side settlement on Monday and described the alleged deletions as a serious matter involving voting rights.
According to the report, Gandhi spoke to residents of Bela Estate and said they had been living there for decades. He also claimed that many of them had voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the 2025 Delhi Assembly election. The residents’ houses were demolished in 2023, but Gandhi said they had not left the area and continued to live there.
Gandhi questioned the connection between the existence of a permanent house and a person’s right to vote. He said he had spoken by telephone to the concerned Sub-Divisional Magistrate and argued that the absence of a house should not determine whether a resident remains on the voter list.
The report also referred to an earlier statement by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar about a provision for homeless citizens, under which their house number could be recorded as ‘zero’. Gandhi cited that provision while questioning the reported deletion of names from Bela Estate.
Gandhi termed the alleged removal of 727 names a method of “vote theft”. The report presents the figure as a claim made by him and does not include an independent election authority confirmation of the voter-list status of all 728 residents.
A separate claim was raised by Delhi Congress vice-president Mudit Agrawal concerning a polling booth in the Chandni Chowk Assembly constituency. Agrawal said that only one name remained on the voter list out of 922 voters associated with the booth. He posted the claim on X and said that, after pressure from local residents, a Booth Level Officer was sent to the area.
Agrawal further claimed that around 450 forms had been submitted but that none had yet resulted in a name being added to the electoral roll. He sought immediate action on the applications. The supplied report says there was no separate official response available on the current status of those 450 applications.
The allegations place attention on how voter registration is handled for residents of settlements affected by demolition, displacement or the lack of conventional house numbers. The report does not establish whether the names were deleted permanently, marked for verification, shifted to another address or omitted because of procedural issues. The next official clarification from election authorities would determine the status of the cited names and applications.
