Delhi HC Dismisses PIL Seeking Special Voter Enrolment for Demolition-Displaced Homeless Persons
A Division Bench found ECI's existing Manual and Draft Electoral Roll extracts sufficient to address exclusion fears, rejecting mandamus for a separate facilitative mechanism during Delhi's Special Intensive Revision exercise.
The High Court of Delhi dismissed a Public Interest Litigation on 19 August 2026 that sought court-mandated special measures to protect the voting rights of persons rendered homeless by demolition drives in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia, held that the Election Commission of India already had an adequate mechanism in place under Clause 8.5 of its March 2023 Manual on Electoral Rolls and that the Draft Electoral Roll already included categories of homeless persons. The court found the petitioner's averments to be bare and unsupported by particulars, and declined all five prayers sought through the writ.
The PIL and What It Sought
The petitioner, Indu Prakash Singh, filed W.P.(C) 11942/2026 alongside CM APPL. 55365/2026 challenging the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision (“SIR”) exercise for Delhi's electoral rolls. The SIR was initiated by ECI Directive No. 23/2025-ERS (Vol. II) dated 14 May 2026. The petitioner also challenged a subsequent ECI communication dated 15 July 2026 to the extent it directed the draft electoral roll to be prepared by 17 August 2026 without, in the petitioner's submission, providing adequate special facilitative mechanisms for persons displaced by demolitions.
The five prayers before the court were wide-ranging. The petitioner sought a writ of mandamus directing respondents to formulate and implement a special facilitative mechanism for enrolment, transposition, or retention of names of homeless or demolition-displaced persons. A further direction was sought to identify and enumerate such persons likely to be affected during the SIR. Directions were also sought to issue standard operating procedures for field officers, to establish dedicated grievance redressal mechanisms for displaced electors, and, by way of certiorari, to partially invalidate the ECI directive and the July 2026 communication.
The respondents were the Government of the NCT of Delhi, the Election Commission of India, and the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, among others. Senior Advocate Mr. Satyakam led arguments for the petitioner. The ECI was represented by Mr. Sanjay Vashishtha, Standing Counsel.
The Structural Exclusion Argument
Senior Counsel for the petitioner argued that the SIR exercise, as designed, posed a systematic risk to the franchise of persons displaced by demolitions. The core concern was the methodology: Booth Level Officers were required to conduct house-to-house enumeration and distribute pre-filled Enumeration Forms to electors at their recorded addresses. Where a recorded premises had been demolished, BLOs were likely to mark the displaced elector as “shifted”, “absent”, or “deceased”.
Persons seeking to regularise their registration by filing Form 8A for transfer or Form 6 for fresh enrolment faced practical obstacles. Homeless persons who had lost documents found it difficult to satisfy the “ordinarily resident” requirement under Section 20 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Rehabilitation colonies, where some displaced persons had been relocated, had not yet been integrated into the electoral mapping framework. There was no mechanism to identify persons living in temporary shelters or on pavements. Additionally, landlords were reportedly refusing to allow voter registration from rented premises, fearing it could generate claims of possession.
The petitioner estimated that approximately 3 lakh persons had been rendered homeless across Delhi since 2023 through demolition drives carried out by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, Delhi Development Authority, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, and Northern/Indian Railways, although no official figure was available.
The petitioner relied on a news report published in the Indian Express on 30 June 2026, quoting the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi as acknowledging that demolition-affected persons are “special cases” to be dealt with separately, and that the ECI was aware of the issue. Despite this acknowledgment, no targeted policy framework, special camps, or facilitative measures had been devised. The petitioner had submitted a representation dated 10 July 2026 to the ECI and the Chief Electoral Officer, but no corrective action followed.
The argument on constitutional infirmity was that the SIR mechanism in its present form amounted to a structurally discriminatory practice violative of Article 326 of the Constitution, which guarantees universal adult suffrage. The petitioner also referred to the ECI's own 2011 Handbook for BLOs, which provides that homelessness is not a disqualification for electoral enrolment and that field verification may be conducted at a person's place of shelter during night hours.
ECI's Response: An Existing Framework
Counsel for the ECI countered that no direction was required because the Manual on Electoral Rolls published in March 2023 already addressed the enrolment of homeless and pavement dwellers. The bench was taken through Clause 8.5 of the Manual, which provides that homeless persons or pavement dwellers who do not possess documentary proof of ordinary residence are eligible for enrolment in the electoral roll, provided they are ordinarily residing at the given place, regardless of whether it is private property, a pavement, or an encroachment on government land.
Under Clause 8.5, once a homeless person files Form 6, the BLO is required to visit the address given therein on more than one night to ascertain that the person actually sleeps there. To guard against enrolment of homeless foreign nationals, the BLO must also record a statement from the applicant disclosing the place of birth and previous place of residence, enabling the Electoral Registration Officer to assess citizenship.
ECI's counsel also referred to a Supreme Court order dated 23 February 2026 in Sana Parveen & Ors. v. Election Commission of India & Ors., W.P.(C) No. 191/2026, a petition filed under Article 32 by residents of a demolished colony whose names had been excluded from the electoral rolls. The Supreme Court declined to entertain that Article 32 petition given seriously disputed questions of fact, and directed the petitioners to approach the District BLO for remedial action in accordance with law. ECI's counsel submitted the same avenue remained open to any person affected by demolitions in Delhi.
ECI further produced an extract of the Draft Electoral Roll showing a category of homeless persons listed with their name, photograph, age, and gender, with house number shown as “0”. This, the ECI submitted, demonstrated that the ongoing SIR exercise was already capturing homeless persons within the Draft Electoral Roll. Counsel also noted that the SIR exercise for Delhi had by then already concluded.
How the Division Bench Reasoned
Justice Tejas Karia, writing for the bench, found that Clause 8.5 of the Manual expressly addressed the ordinary residence determination for homeless persons, in consonance with Section 20 of the RP Act. The bench held that the petitioner's apprehension that homeless persons would be excluded from the Draft Electoral Roll was “without any basis” in light of the existing framework.
On the petitioner's assertion that demolition-displaced persons had been excluded from the electoral rolls before the 2025 Delhi Legislative Assembly Elections, the bench observed that the petitioner had made bald averments without providing particulars or figures of persons who still remained excluded from the rolls subsequent to those elections. The absence of specific data weakened the foundation of the PIL.
The bench addressed the scenario of a displaced elector directly. It reasoned that any elector excluded from the Electoral Roll on account of demolition or relocation is entitled to fill up Form 6 under Rules 13(1) and 26 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. Once Form 6 is filed with the new address, the BLO visits the address on more than one night to ascertain actual residence. The bench considered this an adequate and functional safeguard.
The extract of the Draft Electoral Roll placed on record by ECI, showing homeless persons enrolled with house number “0”, was treated as concrete evidence that ECI was already implementing the Manual's process during the SIR exercise.
The bench's central conclusion was that there was no vacuum in the existing mechanism. Directing the ECI to formulate an additional special facilitative mechanism was therefore, in the bench's view, not required. All five prayers were declined.
Outcome
The Division Bench dismissed W.P.(C) 11942/2026 in its entirety on 19 August 2026. The pending application, CM APPL. 55365/2026, also stood disposed of. The court did not issue any direction to the ECI, the Government of NCT of Delhi, or the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board.