Geeta Devi had climbed the stairs twice before the booth level officer (BLO) told her the documents weren’t enough.The 65-year-old widow disappeared into her one-room home in South Delhi’s Sangam Vihar and returned moments later with her voter identity card. Clutching it tightly, she hurried down the stairs, out of breath by the time she reached the two BLOs waiting a few metres away.Mukesh Chand Meena, the 36-year-old Assistant BLO assigned to Sangam Vihar – one of Asia’s largest unauthorised colonies – glanced at the card for barely a moment before handing it back. “I need your voter ID from 2002,” he said.Geeta, who lives alone in Block A of Sangam Vihar, looked at him blankly. She began voting only in 2009 when, she recalled, a local BJP worker had helped many residents in the neighbourhood obtain voter identity cards. Before that, she had never appeared on Delhi’s electoral rolls.“No problem,” Mukesh said, pulling out his phone and opening the Election Commission of India’s ECINET application. “We’ll link it to your parents. Where did you come to Delhi from?”“Kanpur,” Geeta replied.His thumb scrolled across the screen as he began reading out constituency names. “Govind Nagar. Kanpur Cantonment. General Ganj. Sisamau…”She frowned. “I came here in 2002,” she said. “I don’t remember where I lived back then.”“Do you have any relatives there?” Mukesh asked.“No.”By now, a handful of neighbours had wandered over, listening quietly as the conversation unfolded.Mukesh explained that he would accept her enumeration form but place it in the category of electors who could not establish a link to the 2002 electoral rolls. After the draft electoral roll is published, she would receive a notice asking her to produce a government document establishing her date and place of birth. The explanation only deepened her confusion. “I’ve been voting for so long. Why are you troubling me now?” she said.The exchange is becoming a familiar across the Capital. As BLOs fan out through Delhi for the ECI’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, thousands of electors who enrolled after 2002 are being asked to establish a link with the electoral rolls as they existed on January 1, 2002.Story continues below this adFor many, especially migrants and older residents who no longer possess decades-old records, the request has triggered confusion and anxiety.“Mataji,” Mukesh replied gently. “We know you’re a genuine voter. But now the government wants documentary proof for everything.”Someone in the crowd offered a suggestion. “You receive a widow’s pension.. show that document.” Geeta shook her head. “Our legs are giving way. At this age, they’ll make us run from one government office to another,” she said.The South district, where Sangam Vihar is located, has till last week recorded the highest number of exclusions during the exercise – more than 1.5 lakh. Officials in the Chief Electoral Officer’s office earlier told The Indian Express that they expect around 30% to 40% of names across Delhi to be deleted from the electoral rolls. “Delhi has a large population of migrant labourers, government employees and private-sector professionals, all of whom move frequently and often do not update their addresses,” one official said. “This is why the deletions may exceed 30%.” Officials say urban areas typically see more deletions than rural areas because of their larger floating populations. SIR survey in delhi’s Sangam Vihar on Wednesday. (Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav)On groundMore than 13,000 BLOs are racing to complete Delhi’s voter-roll revision before the August 8 deadline. Around noon, Mukesh and Shakuntala walk Sangam Vihar’s broken lanes with jute bags full of enumeration forms, knocking on doors before time runs out. At House No. 210, the two schoolteachers ring all eight doorbells of a four-storey building.Story continues below this ad“The new owner has rented out all eight rooms to labourers. They’re all out at work,” a neighbour tells them.Mukesh pulls out the enumeration forms of 10 members of one family and slips them into a folder marked “Shifted”.“Since a lot of labourers live here, people move frequently and don’t update their addresses,” he says. “Some have even completed the SIR in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar because they need address proof in their villages.”Under ECI guidelines, BLOs are expected to visit every household at least three times before marking it “Uncollectible” — a category that includes electors who are absent, have shifted, have died, have duplicate entries, or fall under “other” reasons.By Wednesday, Shakuntala had digitised 558 of the 1,497 electors assigned to her. Digitisation involves collecting completed enumeration forms and uploading their details to the ECI’s portal.But, she says, three visits are rarely enough.”We visit houses five or six times,” she says. “If I start showing too many people as shifted, our superiors will question whether they have actually shifted. We also wait until the end because someone may still return and submit the form later. We don’t want any genuine elector to be left out.”Mukesh says another reason the work takes time is that many electors, including literate ones, struggle to fill out the forms on their own. “We end up filling most of the forms ourselves,” he says.Story continues below this adTogether, they estimate that around 40% of the names on their lists belong to people who have shifted since the last SIR.A few lanes away, they stop outside another house they have already visited several times. After the third visit, they pasted a notice informing the residents that failure to submit the forms could result in their names being struck off the electoral roll. The notice, they say, was later torn down by a resident. This time, the family’s eldest son hands over the completed forms and tells them that two members of the household have moved away. As Shakuntala checks the paperwork, she spots an error. “You have to fill in the details of your wife’s parents or grandparents in the 2002 electoral rolls,” she tells him. “You can’t link it to yourself.”The family goes back inside to look for the information while Mukesh and Shakuntala wait outside for nearly an hour. Eventually, they pick up their jute bags and bundles of forms and decide to return later.Their next destination is House No. 307.There is only one problem. “There are four houses numbered 307,” someone in the neighbourhood tells them. “All of them have four storeys.” The two officers nod to each other and begin ringing doorbells again.Story continues below this adAn official from the Chief Electoral Officer’s office claimed that while digitisation in the city is currently at 60%, forms have been collected for closer to 80% of the population, and the rates will go up significantly over the next few days. “We will not extend the deadline once more as the exercise is under control,” the official said. The Delhi Chief Electoral Officer did not respond to queries sent by The Indian Express. SIR survey in delhi’s Sangam Vihar on Wednesday. (Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav)The exercise has also become a political flashpoint.The Aam Aadmi Party has questioned the manner in which the SIR is being carried out. “The BJP government’s claims that 99% of the forms have been distributed, which is entirely wrong,” Delhi AAP chief Saurabh Bharadwaj alleged at a press conference last week. He claimed that nearly 50% of residents in unauthorised colonies said they had not received the SIR forms.A BJP source, however, said a large number of people were expected to submit their forms in the final days before the deadline. The source added that many electors in Delhi had become accustomed to remaining on the electoral rolls both in the capital and in their hometowns.Story continues below this ad“During elections, you will see many lower-income electors returning to their villages to vote. They want to remain registered there because they receive government benefits, such as financial assistance to build a toilet or a house, which they do not get in Delhi. Many people, especially those living in slums and low-income colonies, have their names on the electoral rolls in both places. One of those registrations will now be deleted,” a senior BJP functionary said.Also Read | SIR: At 16.3%, Haryana records 3rd-highest deletion in draft stageA different Delhi, different challengesAbout 10 kilometres from Sangam Vihar, the challenge looks very different.In the affluent neighbourhood of Kailash Colony, BLO Amit Kumar expects that 20% to 30% of the names on his electoral roll could eventually be deleted. But unlike in Sangam Vihar, where migration, missing documents and decades-old electoral records dominate the exercise, Kumar spends much of his time persuading residents to participate at all.With a blue bag of enumeration forms strapped to his scooter, the 33-year-old government school special educator rides through the tree-lined lanes of L Block, pointing out homes whose residents have moved away. An elderly couple now lives with their son in Noida, a family of five has shifted to another block, and one house has given way to a four-storey apartment building.Story continues below this adHe has been the area’s BLO for the past three years.“Most of these families also got voter IDs made for their house helps,” Kumar says. “And many of them employ several house helps. So when they move, those names also have to be deleted.”On the fourth floor of one building, Kumar rings a doorbell for the fourth time in as many visits. Weeks earlier, he had left the family’s enumeration forms with their house help.A young man opens the door. “Who are you?” he asks.Story continues below this ad“I’m from the ECI,” Kumar replies. “I came regarding the SIR. I had left the enumeration forms with your house help a few weeks ago. Have you filled them?”“I don’t know,” the man says. “I don’t have time right now. There are guests at home. Come back tomorrow and I’ll get your work done.”“This is not my work,” Kumar replies, his voice tightening. “I’m making this effort to keep your name on the voter list. I won’t come again. The deadline is very close now. If you want to submit the forms, you’ll have to bring them to me. And if there are mistakes, I may not have time to point them out.”He turns and walks away.The obstacles here are different from those in Sangam Vihar.Residents sometimes refuse to believe Kumar is an election official and ask him to leave. House helps eye him suspiciously when homeowners are away during the day. Once, he says, a resident let a dog loose on him. Because his phone number is printed on every enumeration form, calls come early in the morning and late into the night.So far, Kumar has digitised 611 of the 1,035 electors assigned to him.He believes many residents simply do not feel any urgency. “When we set up camps here, only two or three people show up in four hours,” he says. “The whole day gets wasted. Everybody wants us to come to their homes and collect the forms.”“They’re not afraid,” he says. “Getting their names removed from the electoral roll means nothing to them.”Around 8 p.m., Kumar secures the blue bag to his scooter and begins the 30-km ride home to Ballabgarh. Tomorrow, after a morning in the classroom, he’ll be back on Delhi’s streets, knocking on doors again.