A civil-society public audit in Delhi found at least 100 voters in just two polling booths who had been wrongly deleted under the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD) categories during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, most of them marked Shifted or Absent, according to a report cited by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh (ANI, citing the media report).

Ramesh alleged — labelled as his allegation — that the Election Commission of India should 'clear up the mess created by SIR', restore voters he says were illegitimately deleted, and asked how many of the over 9 crore voters deleted across the country in the Shifted/Absent categories alone are genuine voters. He also alleged many wrongfully deleted voters are unaware of special camps and have not been contacted by Booth Level Officers.

Context for balance: Delhi's draft roll published August 31 had 97.5 lakh names against about 1.4 crore electors before the revision, with about 47.6 lakh removed as ASDD; the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer has said about 26 lakh, or 78.5%, of 33.1 lakh discrepancy/no-mapping cases have been resolved (The Hindu, via reports), and election officials have begun a special re-verification drive giving deleted ASDD voters a chance to re-enrol via Form 6 by October 30, with verification due by October 29 and final rolls slated for November 4 (The Hindu / The Indian Express reports).

Sources: ANI (Jairam Ramesh statement, Oct 19), The Hindu (public audit report, Oct 19), The Hindu/The Indian Express (Delhi CEO re-verification).