Name Mismatch, Age Gap And More: Why 3.3 Million Delhi Voters Received SIR Notices From EC

Failure to map voters to the previous Special Intensive Revision (SIR) electoral roll is the single biggest reason for notices issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to people included in Delhi’s draft electoral roll, accounting for 42% of all notices.

The Delhi draft electoral roll was published on August 31 after the first phase of the SIR exercise. Data uploaded by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi shows that discrepancies involving names account for most of the remaining notices, followed by unusual age differences between voters and their parents or children.

However, a significant 59,791 notices do not mention any reason for the discrepancy.

3.31 Million People Issued Notices

According to the CEO’s data, 3.31 million people have been issued notices. Of these, 3.11 million, or 94%, have only one reason recorded against their names.

Around 1.38 million people who were not mapped to the previous SIR are among those with a single reason listed.

Some notices involving logical discrepancies contain multiple reasons. Around 128,000 notices list two reasons, about 9,000 list three reasons and more than 400 list four reasons.

The data also shows that multiple discrepancies can be recorded against the same person. For ranking the reasons by frequency, each occurrence of a discrepancy has therefore been counted separately.

Name Mismatch Second-Biggest Reason

Name-related discrepancies are the second-largest category of notices, accounting for around 41% of notices when individual occurrences are counted.

“Parent Name Mismatch” accounts for about 24% of notices, while “Self Name Mismatch” accounts for another 17%.

Age-related discrepancies account for approximately 16% of notices. These include differences such as:

• Progeny Age Gap <9 Months: 6.4%
• Parent Age Difference <15 Years: 5%
• Parent Age Difference >50 Years: 2.5%
• Grandparent Age Difference <40 Years: 2.3%

Nearly 140,000 people, or 4.2% of notices, have also been flagged for having six or more children. Another 182 people have been marked because their parents were ineligible in the previous SIR.

Wide Variation Across Delhi Constituencies

The proportion of electors receiving notices varies considerably across Delhi’s Assembly constituencies.

In Matia Mahal, notices were issued to 22.7% of people on the draft roll, the lowest proportion among the constituencies. Badarpur recorded the highest proportion at 44.2%.

The data also shows that the average age of people receiving notices is 40 years.

The median age — the middle value when the population is arranged by age — is also 40. The oldest 20% of those issued notices are aged 54 or above, while the oldest 10% are aged 62 or above.

125-Year-Old Voter Among Those Issued Notice

The oldest person listed is 125-year-old Shyam Mukhija from the Sadar Bazar Assembly constituency in Old Delhi. He was issued a notice over a self-name mismatch.

Delhi has a somewhat older population than India overall. National Commission on Population projections for 2026 put India’s median age at 30.27 years and Delhi’s at 31.91 years.

Men, Women And Transgender Voters

The gender breakdown shows that 34.5% of men on the draft electoral roll have received notices, compared with 33.4% of women.

Among transgender electors, however, around half of the 447 people included in the draft roll have been issued notices.

Data Caveat Over Uploaded Booth Lists

The figures should be read with some caution because the CEO’s website had not uploaded notice lists for all polling booths at the time of the analysis.

As of 6pm on September 20, four of Delhi’s 14,947 booths did not have a list uploaded. Their respective PDFs stated: “No Notices generated for this Part No”.

Nearly 400 booths had carried the same message when the CEO’s website began uploading the lists on September 19. Most of those were updated with tables containing voter details by September 20.

The missing lists are not expected to materially alter the broad trends, including the finding that a substantial number of notices currently have no reason recorded. The calculation of the 59,791 notices without a stated reason was based on PDFs containing tables with details such as the voter’s name, age and EPIC number.