New Delhi, India – External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani, Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, and former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia were among several prominent names on Delhi’s draft electoral roll to be identified for notices either for “logical discrepancies” flagged by the Election Commission’s software or under the “no mapping” category. Economist and Padma awardee Bibek Debroy, who died in November 2024, also figures in Delhi’s draft roll and has been flagged for “no mapping” with the previous Special Intensive Revision (SIR) roll.
Notices are being generated to verify documents in cases of logical discrepancies in electors’ records and to establish eligibility in cases of “no mapping.” A list of those for whom notices were generated was published on Friday. Debroy, who had served as chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council and was 69 when he passed away, is listed as a 70-year-old elector in the Delhi Cantonment Assembly constituency in the draft electoral roll published on August 31. He has further been listed in the list of 33.1 lakh electors against whom notices have been issued.
A voter in Delhi Cantonment constituency, Election Commissioner Sandhu’s name was flagged for the “self-name mismatch” discrepancy, which means a mismatch between the name given during the current SIR process and the previous roll. The electoral registration officer later said Sandhu’s name has been validated for inclusion in the final electoral roll after “documents, facts, and details” were verified. Notices were also generated for two former Chief Election Commissioners—Sushil Chandra and Arun Goel—both flagged for “no mapping with previous SIR.”
Jaishankar and his wife, Kyoko Somekawa Jaishankar, have also been flagged for notice for “no mapping” with the last SIR. For the same reason, former BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya has been issued a notice. Advani, his daughter Pratibha Advani, and daughter-in-law Geetika Advani were also in the unmapped category, as was Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri. In the case of Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the slot for the reason his name was flagged was left blank. There are at least 63,000 such entries in the list where the column for the reason remained blank.
Delhi has seen complaints from citizens who said their names were missing from the draft roll despite submitting enumeration forms, as well as cases of electors being wrongly marked “dead” or “shifted.” A total of 47.56 lakh voters have been excluded from the draft roll and placed in the ASDD category. The 33.1 lakh electors flagged for logical discrepancies or no mapping constitute over one-third of the 97.5 lakh electors in the draft roll. Verification and disposal of these cases are to be completed by October 29, with the final electoral roll scheduled to be published on November 4.
