Large-scale deletions of "shifted" voters disproportionately affect migrants. Suggest institutional reforms to ensure the portability of voter registration.

Article 326 guarantees adult suffrage. Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 lets the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) transpose an elector's entry, which means moving the name to the new address [5]. In the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), however, moving house has often led to deletion rather than transfer. Portability of registration must become the default.

Why "shifted" deletions hurt migrants

• Scale: Delhi's SIR draft roll left out about 47.6 lakh of roughly 1.45 crore electors. They were marked Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate [1].
• Burden shifted to the voter: Excluded electors were sent to Form 6, the new-voter form, with a declaration [2]. Form 8 already exists for a change of residence [4]. The Supreme Court called the Form 6 route an "error" and asked whether an inert voter should lose the vote "forever" [3].
• Who loses: Seasonal workers, tenants and students have the least time and the fewest documents to reapply. Registers that depend on voters applying themselves tend to drop people who change address [6].

Institutional reforms

Legal and procedural

• Treat anyone on the last roll as an existing elector. Accept Form 8 or a late enumeration form from them, as the Court suggested [3][4].
• Amend the rules so that a "shifted" finding leads to Section 22 transposition, not deletion [5].

Administrative

• Allow no shifting deletion without a case-wise field report from the Booth Level Officer (BLO), as the ECI's own revision guidance requires [7].
• Move toward state-initiated registration, where officials enrol voters at their new homes [6].

Technology

• Make the EPIC (voter ID card) a lifelong, single national ID. The Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 allows Aadhaar-based authentication and four qualifying dates a year [8]. Using these, the old entry would be removed only when the new one is added.
• Pilot the ECI's multi-constituency Remote Voting Machine for domestic migrants [9].

Current:  No response → "Shifted" → Deleted → Form 6 (as a new voter)
Portable: Move → Form 8 + BLO check → Transposed → Same EPIC, new booth

Fig: From deletion to transfer

Oversight

• Publish reason-wise deletion lists online before the final roll, and have an independent body audit a sample of deletions.

A clean roll and an inclusive roll can go together: duplicates disappear when entries are moved rather than erased. A portable "one elector, one EPIC, any address" system would fulfil the ECI's Article 324 mandate and the promise of Article 326. It would also advance SDG 16.7 on inclusive, representative decision-making.