‘We Voted In 2025, Now Our Names Are Gone’: Residents Left Shocked

Finding JJ Bela Estate is not easy. On Google Maps, a search for the settlement points instead to Vijay Ghat, the memorial of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. On the ground, too, the settlement is difficult to locate without asking residents in the area.

But for the people who live there, the place is home. And now, many say, they are struggling to understand how they can remain on the electoral roll when hundreds of their names have disappeared.

As part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), 632 voters listed in Part 33 (old) of the Lal Qila-Yamuna Bridge polling station in the Chandni Chowk Assembly constituency were removed from the draft electoral roll and marked as “shifted”.

The settlement lies along a service road beneath an overbridge, across from Vijay Ghat. Residents point to the area as JJ Bela Estate, where several families have lived for decades.

Yashpal is one of them. He lives there with his mother, sister, wife and children, and says his extended family has 15 voters. According to him, every one of their names has now vanished from the draft roll.

That came as a surprise because Yashpal had voted in the 2025 Delhi Assembly election. His name, he said, was on the electoral roll then. During the SIR exercise, a Booth Level Officer gave him a form, which he completed and returned. He said no one explained why his name and those of his family members were later deleted.

His sister Usha said their connection with the land goes back generations.

“We were born here in these fields. Our houses were demolished in 2003 and since then we have been forced to live on the road,” she said.

She pointed towards a DDA garden, saying the land had once been cultivated by their family.

Yashpal also showed his Aadhaar card. It lists his year of birth as 1972 and gives his address as “Agriculture JJ Bela Estate, Vijay Ghat, Chandni Chowk”.

He is not the only resident raising the same complaint. Srinivas, Tinku, Omwati, Meena, Suman, Mangal Pandey, Sheela Devi, Shalu and Radha, among others, said their names too were absent from the draft roll.

From hundreds of voters to one

Kamal Master, who lives in the settlement, has been helping residents navigate the SIR process. He said he personally assisted more than 500 people in filling out the required forms.

The scale of the deletion, he said, becomes clearer when earlier electoral rolls are compared.

Kamal showed a 2025 roll that he said had at least 927 voters from JJ Bela Estate. By the time the SIR exercise began in 2026, the number had fallen to 729. In the latest draft, he said, just one voter remained.

“We came to know on 31 August 2026, that all our votes had been removed,” Kamal said.

Residents subsequently approached the Election Commission, he said. They were allegedly told that the decision had been taken by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM), rather than by the Election Commission itself.

Kamal alleged that SDM Manoj Kumar of Daryaganj had cited the settlement’s location on DDA land, its flood-prone status and the history of demolitions in the area as reasons for not retaining the voters.

The residents say they have documents they believe establish their longstanding presence in the area. Kamal produced a 1961 electoral roll for the Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency and pointed to the names of his grandfather Shrilal, grandmother Kalawati and great-grandfather Punilal.

He said residents also possess electoral rolls dating to 1975 and 2002 and had submitted their details during the SIR process.

What has particularly angered them, Kamal said, is the apparent difference in treatment between JJ Bela Estate and another settlement on DDA land in Rajghat, under the Jangpura Assembly constituency, where residents’ names continue to appear in the draft roll.

“How did their votes get made? Why are we being asked for registry papers, water bills and electricity bills? If the law is the same, why is there discrimination against us?” he asked.

Kamal said the local MLA subsequently took up the issue with the Election Commission. Following this, BLO Garima Arya contacted residents and said she would visit on Sunday to assist them with Form 6 applications.

According to Kamal, Arya told him that she had already filled the forms submitted by residents and that the decision over the deleted names was between the Election Commission and the SDM, not her.

‘Only the voter ID was left’

For residents, the electoral roll dispute is not simply about an election document. Many say the voter ID was one of the few official links they had to a life that has otherwise remained insecure.

Janaki Devi has lived in the settlement for 36 years. She moved there from Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh after marriage and says residents have continued living in the area despite years of difficult conditions.

“Whether it is summer, rain or winter, we live here. We also get ration and sometimes receive treatment at government hospitals,” she said.

The deletion of her voting rights, she said, has made an already uncertain existence feel even more precarious.

“Only the voter ID was left; now that too has been taken away. I don’t know what they think of us — insects or something,” she said.

Mangal Pandey, another resident, said families had recently received two months’ ration together but were unsure what would happen to their access to government supplies in the future.

Janaki said neither an MP nor an MLA had visited the settlement so far. Yet she remains determined to have her family’s names restored.

For residents who say they were born, raised and have spent decades in JJ Bela Estate, the dispute has become a question of recognition.

“We are not foreigners. We are not Pakistani. We are people who live here and will remain here. Whether we live or die, we will get our voter IDs made,” Janaki said.