Muslims accounted for 20.3% of voters flagged for “logical discrepancies” in Delhi’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, despite making up 13.6% of electors on the draft rolls, an analysis by The Hindu has found.
The analysis also found that Muslims accounted for 30% of voters flagged under criteria related to family size, raising questions about whether the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) verification rules disproportionately affect the community.
The report found that the ECI’s centralised ERONET software, rather than Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), was determining which voters were flagged for logical discrepancies. EROs are the statutory authorities responsible for electoral rolls.
Delhi’s draft SIR rolls contained 97.54 lakh electors. Of these, 33.12 lakh were flagged for notices, including 13.79 lakh marked as “Unmapped with Last SIR” and 19.33 lakh flagged for logical discrepancies under eight categories.
Around 13.3 lakh electors, or 13.6% of the total, were Muslims.
Muslims Overrepresented Among Flagged Voters
According to The Hindu, Muslims accounted for 7.6% of voters flagged as “Unmapped with Last SIR”, indicating that a smaller proportion of the community fell into this category than among those flagged for logical discrepancies.
Under the latter category, however, Muslims made up 20.3% of those flagged.
“For every 1,000 Muslim electors in the draft roll, 318 were flagged for ‘logical discrepancies’, while the corresponding figure for the rest of the non-Muslim electors was 197 per 1,000,” the report said.
The ECI’s guidelines list eight reasons for flagging logical discrepancies. These include name mismatches, parents being marked “ineligible in the last SIR”, and criteria related to the number and ages of children and differences between parents’ and grandparents’ ages.
The report found that nearly 60,000 electors were flagged without any reason being specified. Muslims accounted for nearly 20% of this group, substantially above their share of the draft electoral roll.
Family Size Criteria Flag More Muslim Electors
The largest disparity emerged among voters flagged under criteria linked to family size. These include having six or more children, a parent-child age difference exceeding 50 years, a grandparent-grandchild age difference below 40 years, a childbearing age gap of less than nine months, and a parent-child age difference below 15 years.
Of the 6.75 lakh electors flagged under one or more of these criteria, 30% were Muslims, more than double their 13.6% share of the draft rolls.
The disparity was particularly pronounced among electors flagged under the “Progeny >= 6” category, which refers to having six or more children. Of the 1.4 lakh electors flagged under this criterion, Muslims accounted for 58%, according to the report.
These figures raise questions about how the criteria were designed and whether demographic differences between religious communities could lead to disproportionate scrutiny of Muslim voters.
Questions Over ECI’s Verification Process
The findings come amid broader scrutiny of the SIR process and the criteria used to verify voter eligibility. The analysis noted that fertility rates in India have declined across religious communities, according to recent National Family Health Survey findings.
The data does not, by itself, establish that voters were excluded from the final electoral rolls because of their religion. However, the disproportionate representation of Muslims among those flagged raises questions about how the software applies the criteria and whether the process includes adequate safeguards against unequal outcomes.
The ECI has not, according to the report, publicly explained why individual electors were flagged for logical discrepancies or clarified the basis for the disproportionate figures.
