Delhi Voters Queue at SIR Centres to Prove Eligibility
At SIR hearing centres across Delhi, voters are making repeated trips and waiting hours to prove eligibility, with the burden falling hardest on the poor.
Across the national capital, hearing centres set up for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls have become scenes of repeated visits, stacks of paperwork and long waits, as residents seek to establish that they are eligible to vote.
Many of those turning up have cast ballots for years. Even so, they are being asked to produce documents and appear in person, sometimes more than once, to retain a right they had long taken for granted.
The process has been marked by confusion, with applicants uncertain about what exactly is required of them and officials acknowledging the difficulties on the ground. Queues form early and stretch through the day as people wait their turn.
The heaviest burden is falling on the city's poorer residents, who often lack the kind of documentary proof the exercise demands. For them, the requirement to establish identity has become a test not just of patience but of access.
What emerges from the hearing centres is a picture of a routine administrative exercise that, for many Delhiites, has turned into a prolonged struggle to be counted.