Delhi to Add More Polling Stations as ECI Lowers Voter Cap per Booth
Delhi is set to increase its total number of polling stations following a rationalisation exercise conducted under the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, officials said on Friday.
The expansion comes as the prescribed ceiling for electors per polling station has been reduced from 1,500 to 1,200. Additional polling stations are being created in areas where voter numbers exceed the revised limit.
District election officers across the capital identified polling booths with more than 1,200 electors using pre-SIR data and submitted proposals to reconfigure polling stations. Once cleared by the Election Commission of India (ECI), voters will be linked to the newly created stations via the election IT system. The final count of new polling booths will be confirmed following ECI approval on August 24.
Delhi currently has 13,033 polling stations spread across nearly 2,697 locations in 13 districts. Officials noted that any newly established stations or locations will generally remain within a two-kilometre radius of existing booths to avoid inconvenience to electors.
The rationalisation exercise relies on Delhi’s pre-SIR database, which accounted for approximately 14.5 million electors when rolls were frozen on June 16. Because the rationalisation work is still underway, the ECI revised the timeline for the SIR exercise.
Under the revised schedule, the draft electoral roll will be published on August 31. The claims and objections window will run from August 31 to September 30, with officials slated to resolve all cases by October 29. The final electoral roll is scheduled for publication on November 4, revised from the earlier date of October 27.
The SIR drive commenced on June 30 with booth-level officers distributing enumeration forms door-to-door and concluded on August 17. More than 4.7 million electors, representing nearly 33% of Delhi’s pre-SIR voter base, were categorized under the Absent, Shifted, or Dead/Duplicate (ASD) category because their forms were not digitised.
Electors listed under the ASD category will not be included in the August 31 draft roll. However, individuals marked as absent or shifted may file claims and objections during the designated window to seek inclusion in the final electoral roll.
