Delhi High Court Rejects Plea Alleging Exclusion of Homeless People from Voter List During SIR
The Delhi High Court has dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging that homeless people and those displaced by demolition drives could be excluded from the electoral rolls during the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the national capital.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said the apprehension that homeless persons would be left out of the electoral roll appeared to be without basis. The court held that an existing mechanism already provides for determining the “ordinary residence” of homeless electors.
The petition was filed by Indu Prakash Singh, who sought a special facilitative mechanism to ensure the enrolment, retention or transposition of voters who have no fixed residence or who became homeless after demolition drives.
The petitioner had raised concerns over the house-to-house enumeration process being used for the SIR. The argument was that Booth Level Officers conducting physical verification could face difficulties in locating people living without a permanent address, potentially resulting in their names being left out of the revised electoral roll.
The High Court, however, pointed to Clause 8.5 of the Election Commission’s Electoral Rolls Manual. According to the court, the Manual already contains a process for determining the ordinary residence of homeless persons in accordance with the Representation of the People Act.
The court therefore found that there was no “vacuum” in the existing system that required judicial intervention. It also described the petitioner’s allegations concerning people displaced by demolition drives as “bald averments” in the absence of concrete material demonstrating systematic exclusion.
The ruling comes at a particularly significant moment for Delhi’s electoral rolls. The draft electoral roll following the SIR was released on August 31, with reports indicating that about 47.7 lakh names were omitted from the previous roll of roughly 1.45 crore electors. The Election Commission has opened a claims-and-objections process for people who believe they have been wrongly excluded.
The court’s decision does not mean that a person who has been displaced or rendered homeless is automatically removed from the electoral register. Rather, the court has emphasized that the existing electoral-roll framework already provides a route for establishing ordinary residence and seeking inclusion.
The judgment also comes after the same bench had reserved its order on August 19. During the earlier hearing, the court had questioned whether it should monitor the implementation of the Election Commission’s policy and indicated that developing an administrative mechanism for homeless and displaced voters was primarily the responsibility of the poll authority.
For voters whose names are missing from the newly published draft roll, the immediate issue is therefore not the court case but the claims process. Eligible persons can seek inclusion in the electoral roll, including through Form 6, during the period provided by the Election Commission. The current claims-and-objections window is scheduled to remain open until September 30.
The case nevertheless highlights a broader challenge created by intensive voter-roll verification: ensuring that efforts to remove duplicate, shifted, deceased or otherwise ineligible entries do not inadvertently affect genuine voters who live in temporary, unstable or undocumented housing conditions.
With the final electoral roll yet to be published, the effectiveness of the correction and claims process will be crucial in determining whether concerns about the exclusion of vulnerable voters are adequately addressed.
