Seeking to dislodge the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party has made a sweeping promise to slum dwellers in the capital: “Jahan jhuggi, wahan makaan” – a house for you where you live.
But as the state goes to the polls on Wednesday, the promise rings hollow for Mohammad Yunus. “Na jhuggi bachhi hai, na vote.” Neither is the slum left now, nor our vote, said the 49-year-old tailor.
In November 2023, civic authorities flattened Yunus’s home and those of nearly 300 others in a slum near Sundar Nursery in South Delhi. About 1,000 people living in the area were rendered homeless. Nearly 2.8 lakh people were evicted from their homes in 2023, according to the Housing and Land Rights network in Delhi.
The demolition near Sundar Nursery was carried out on the directions of the Delhi High Court, which held that the slum did not exist before January 1, 2006 – the cut-off under the Delhi Slum and Jhuggi Jhopri Rehabilitation and Relocation Policy. Slums that existed before the cut-off cannot be removed without rehabilitating the residents.
Yunus, who said his family had lived in the slum since at least 1974, moved to another slum neighbourhood, in Nizamuddin West, about a kilometre away. Although it is part of the same assembly constituency of Jangpura as his previous home, he found out a few weeks ago that his name has been struck off the electoral rolls.
“I have been voting for the past 30 years,” he said. “Why was our right to vote snatched away this time? They could have informed us properly about the procedure to update our details in the rolls.”
Yunus is not the only one facing such disenfranchisement in the Delhi Assembly election. As many as 628 people evicted from the slum near Sundar Nursery no longer feature on the voter list published by the Election Commission on January 6, according to an evaluation done by local residents. Scroll verified about 15 such cases.
One of the voters whose name was deleted, 57-year-old Shakila Ansari, said she had been living in the area since as early as 1984. For as long as she could remember, she had cast her vote at polling booth number 17 in Sunder Nagar.
Even during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, held six months after her home was demolished, many of them had voted, said Ansari. She expected to vote in the assembly polls scheduled for February 5 – but had a rude shock.
“When I entered my Electors Photo Identification Card number on the website, the portal threw a message that read ‘No record found’,” said 32-year-old Md Ather. “We are all connected on WhatsApp and I informed some friends.”
Among them is Shakila Ansari’s daughter Rehana Ansari, 32, who also lives in a rented house in the Nizamuddin West slum.
When they heard of the deletions, a few of them downloaded the voter rolls through internet centres in the area and confirmed that their names were no longer on the list, she said. “We were shocked,” she added. “We are invisible to the government now.”
Procedure to delete voters
According to the Election Commission manual for its officials, a voter’s name can be deleted from electoral rolls if they have died, shifted from their ordinary residence with no possibility of returning, have been disqualified, reported to be missing, or their name has been entered more than once in the list.
The deletions are incorporated by electoral registration officers, who are state government officers appointed by the Election Commission to prepare electoral rolls of the constituency under their charge.
The manual says that if the electoral registration officer gets the report of mass migration of electors due to the demolition of a settlement, they must issue a 15-day notice via speed-post. If the postal department returns the notice saying that the person was not found at the given address, or if the voter does not respond in time, then a booth-level officer is sent for field verification.
If the booth-level officer is unable to find the voter, the electoral registration officer can delete the name from the roll of the constituency after the 15-day notice ends.
The booth-level officer in Sunder Nagar, Urmila, said she had made a field visit to the area and verified in October that there was no scope for the slum residents to return to their ordinary residences.
In the final list, 628 voters from the demolished slum were marked as “shifted”. Of the eight voters Scroll spoke to, none had received a notice from the electoral registration officer.
Scroll emailed the electoral registration officer of Jangpura asking if notices were issued to the voters. He has yet to respond.
Not all residents of the demolished slum have been struck off the voting list. Only those who were listed on part 17 have been affected.
The Election Commission divides each electoral roll into different parts for convenience. Each part enlists all registered voters within a well-defined polling station area. Some residents of the demolished slum were listed on part 17 of the electoral roll for Jangpura, others were on part 16. Some of those who feature in part 16 of the constituency are still present on the list. The booth level officer for part 16, Sangeeta Singh, said she was not responsible for the area where the slum was.
Confusion around camp
The booth-level officer, Urmila, said the Election Commission had held a two-day camp at the site of the demolished slum after the verification process was over. This was the time when the voters could submit Form 8 and inform the poll panel about a change of address and other particulars.
Shahida Ansari, 36, said she had no information that such a camp had been held.
“If Ather [former neighbour] had not told us about the deletions, I would have probably realised that I could no longer vote only after reaching the polling station on the election day,” she said.
Mohammed Yunus had received information from his neighbours that a camp was organised. “However, some people had spread misinformation that our names would be deleted from the rolls if we went there,” he said.
Yunus added that he was told the purpose of the camp was to check if voters are residing at the address mentioned on their identification card, not that it was an opportunity for them to update their details.
“I had not been keeping well for over a month,” he said. “So, I could not go and verify this for myself.”
No avenue to update details
The displaced slum dwellers emphasised that informing the Election Commission about their new address would not have helped their cause.
To modify or correct existing entries in the electoral roll, the poll panel requires a voter to submit Form 8 along with either their Aadhaar card, passport, rent lease, or bills of water, electricity or gas connections for at least a year. They can also submit a passbook issued by a bank or post office, or the revenue department’s land-owning records.
The displaced slum dwellers said they have not been able to change their addresses on their Aadhaar cards, passports or passbooks after their homes were demolished.
“I have moved at least five houses since December 2023,” said Vinod Kumar Singh, 40, also a displaced resident of the demolished slum. “Shahida has moved thrice and the same goes for Rehana. If there is no permanent residence, how do we give them a permanent residence proof?”
Singh also pointed out that the residents have been able to find affordable places only in other unauthorised colonies or slums.
“Nobody gets a formal electricity or water bill where we have been forced to live,” he said. “Some are even spending nights in night shelters and some are sleeping at the railway station. How do I tell them where I live?”
‘Would have voted for rehabilitation’
The 675 slum clusters in the national capital witnessed heated campaigning from the three major parties: the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party and rivals BJP and the Congress.
Spread across 62 of the 70 Assembly constituencies in Delhi, these slum clusters house 15.5 lakh people – 10% of the total electorate. The BJP has again promised to build homes where the slums stand.
In response, Aam Aadmi Party national convener Arvind Kejriwal said he would drop out of the electoral contest if the Centre withdrew all cases related to slum demolitions and gave an undertaking in court to rehabilitate displaced residents on their original land.
Although Yunus cannot vote this time, he said rehabilitation would have been a key issue for him. Others whose names have been deleted from the electoral rolls agreed.
“Naturally, we would have voted for the candidate who we think could do something in our matter of rehabilitation,” said Rehana Ansari.
Shahida Ansari saw voting as a means to hold politicians accountable. “But now, even if we go to ask them questions, they would not listen,” she said. “If we cannot vote, we are of no relevance to them.”
