Invisible Slum Dwellers 'Not Even Voting' Amid High-Stakes Delhi Polls: Report (representative image)

New Delhi: Many people in Delhi have lost voting rights in the ongoing Assembly Elections, and one among them is Muhammad Yunus, whose house was flattened by the authorities in 2023.

Since the eviction, Yunus has been living in the nearby Nizamudeen West Slum. His house was among nearly 300 homes demolished by the authorities near Sundar Nursery in South Delhi. Around 1000 people have lost their roof after the demolition drive.

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The measure had been 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. According to it, slums that existed before the cut-off cannot be removed without rehabilitating the residents.

Notably, Yunus, while speaking to The Scroll, said that his family had lived in the evicted slum since at least 1974. Since the demolition drive, they moved to another slum, Nizamudeen West. Despite being part of the same assembly constituency of Jangpura as his previous home, he realized that his name has been removed from the voting list this time.

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Though the BJP has countered AAP’s welfare promises with its slum rehabilitation guarantees, the hope of people like Yunus has been hit with the depressing realities of the threat to even existence and voting rights.

“Neither is the slum left now, nor our vote,” laments the 49-year-old Yunus, who is working as a tailor.

Yunus said he has been voting for the past 30 years, wondering why his right to vote was snatched away this time. He helplessly asked if the authorities could have informed them properly about the procedure to update their details in the rolls if there are any issues with them.

It is not Yunus’s lone story. As as many as 628 people evicted from the slum near Sundar Nursery face similar eviction from the voting list published by the poll body, reported the news portal. It mentions Shakila Ansari, another victim whose name was deleted from the electoral roll despite being a resident in the area since as early as 1984. She had used her previous voting exercise rights at booth number 17, as she remembers.

What is more concerning is that even during the Lok Sabha election held last year, many of those whose names were deleted from the list had cast their votes, The Scroll quoted Ansari.

Another victim, Mh Ather, said that when he entered his Elector’s Photo Identification Card number on the website, the portal showed a message that read ‘No record found.’

Some of the evicted slum dwellers are living in rented houses in the Nizamuddin West slum. It is also important to note that not all those evicted from the alum have been removed from the voters list. 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, as per the poll body.

According to the manual, 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. But many of the names deleted from the list have not been informed or sent notice, as per their claims.

The Scroll reported that 628 voters from the demolished slum were marked as “shifted,” and some of them, with whom the news portal talked, reported they had not received a notice from the electoral registration officer.

Amid a high-stakes battle with three major political fronts racing for power, the national capital has become a point of clash between welfare schemes and promises, so much so that it is leaving voters in puzzlement about their choice. There are many civic concerns including the rehabilitation of slum dwellers that the political parties are left unaddressed.

Unfortunately, many of them have been even invisible to the authorities, leaving aside several questions.