New Delhi: As election officials send out notices under Delhi’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), citizens are unaware that they are being bracketed into ‘general’ and ‘VIP’ voters. 

The Reporters’ Collective has found that in the SIR process, officers have been directed, often informally on WhatsApp, to mark ministers and their families, celebrities, judges, advocates, bureaucrats, IAS, IPS, media persons, social workers and others as VIPs. 

While the controversy around VIP voters sparked panic that the Election Commission of India’s (ECI), SIR was overreaching, and could end up removing prominent voters, our investigation shows it is the exact opposite, the ECI is bending rules to ensure no VIP is left behind.

Informal messages have been sent out on WhatsApp ordering election officers to ensure that these VIPs are not deleted in the SIR process “causing inconvenience or embarrassment” to the ECI later.

On the ECI web application, used by booth-level officers, a special module has been deployed to identify and give VIPs a way out from standing in queues to prove their identity and right to vote, unlike ordinary citizens.

Common citizens now being served notices are supposed to attend hearings and prove their eligibility. But we found that the VIPs are getting an easy pass. 

While VIPs’ names, such as that of the Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, have popped up on the list of voters to be sent notices, this elaborate informal and formal system is helping ensure the VIPs are given a fast-track personalised experience.

Chief Minister Gupta’s notice was resolved within a few hours, without even a hearing.

The controversy erupted on September 19, when CM Gupta, former deputy prime minister LK Advani and several other high profile names were flagged by the ECI as “unmapped” to the 2002 voter rolls or having “logical discrepancies.” 

As per our previous report, Delhi had 1.45 crore voters. Of these, the ECI has either deleted or raised doubts on more than half the Delhi’s voting population. The country’s capital possibly has the highest concentration of VIPs in the country, sending election officials on an overdrive of identifying and marking them for this round of revision. 

We cracked the BLOApp’s code that is used by booth level officers (BLOs) in this process and found that ECI switched on a feature to ‘Mark VIP’ electors during Delhi’s SIR. This was done to identify VIPs so that they can be treated differently than ordinary citizens of Delhi.

To ascertain how this module in the BLOApp was being put to use on ground, we went digging at six voting centres across four districts of Delhi. We found, off the record, instructions being sent down the network of election officials in Delhi to mark out the ECI’s VIPs. 

The Representation of Peoples Act, 1950, does not explicitly create a class of citizens granting them differential electoral privileges. Though ECI in its manual has for a while asked its officials to treat a select group of marked electors, such as elected representatives, judges, holders of declared offices and personalities from fields of arts, culture, among others, to be treated as special while drawing up electoral rolls.

Neither the manual nor the law permits ECI and its officials to guarantee VIPs get on voter lists, without verification and tests that ordinary citizens are put to, only to safeguard the commission from embarrassment.

During the SIR in Delhi, our investigation exposes how the ECI has set up an elaborate process to give the VIPs a preferential treatment. Who is and who is not a VIP has been left to its discretion. While the ordinary queue up to protect their rights.

ECI’s VIP Protocol

Sitting in a small office at a residential building in East Delhi, BLO M, opened the app to show how it worked. At the end of the interface’s homepage lay a widget “Mark VIP.” Once opened, names of all electors came up along with their EPIC numbers, age etc. Beneath each name lay an option saying mark VIP. From our analysis this feature was updated on July 30. 

The task to mark VIPs was given to BLOs through the app but directions for its use were issued by election officers. We have shown in our previous report on West Bengal SIR how ECI repeatedly changed its software, called ERONET, and issued informal WhatsApp instructions to conduct the process with discretion and opaquely.

According to the WhatsApp messages relayed during Delhi SIR, analysed by The Collective, people are being considered VIP if they fall under certain categories of “cabinet ministers, their family members, celebrities, judges” etc. In Delhi too, these directives have gone out to BLOs from Electoral Registration Officers (ERO) via WhatsApp groups. 

Sources at voting centres told us, select Youtubers and influencers were also being treated as VIPs. We could not verify this particular claim independently.

According to one BLO, speaking on the condition of anonymity, they have been asked to exercise extra care for the VIP voters.

The BLO told of a case of a serving minister in Delhi. When the enumeration form was given to the minister, she claimed the minister was unable to figure out details of the 2002 voter list and mention it in the form. Since the minister was to be treated as a VIP voter, the BLO said she raised this case with the ERO because without the details of the 2002 list, the minister’s name would have been flagged as “unmapped”.

ERO asked the BLO to draw a false linkage of the minister from the 2002 rolls. We could not independently verify if this had occurred. 

Two Additional EROs told us that they are “personally ensuring” that all VIP voters made it to the final rolls.

ECI’s 2023 manual states that these voters should be flagged in the electoral database. One ERO and one BLO supervisor claimed that such lists have always been maintained. But who is put on these lists and who is not, remains in blind. 

The Representation of People’s Act does not explicitly empower the ECI to provide anyone a VIP treatment. 

The opaqueness about ECI’s lists of VIPs, bundled with an even more non-transparent method of passing orders via off-the-record WhatsApp messages has created a two-tiered citizenry during Delhi’s SIR. 

We asked a former senior election commission official how the ECI has traditionally identified VIPs. 

He said, “jiska naam katne pe badnaami ho. (If deleting a person from the voter list will cause us humiliation, that person is our VIP).” 

The VIP on ECI’s App

We reviewed the ECI’s BLOApp. We noticed that the app had been repeatedly updated over the last three months. One of the updates read, “Mark VIP Electors”. To understand what this update was all about, we cracked the app code. 

We found there is a separate module on the BLO app to flag VIPs while doing the house to house check during SIR. 

Essentially, the app opens an option for BLOs to ‘recommend’ any voter in their polling booth as a VIP. It is as simple as clicking a ‘Yes’ button. The software then pushes BLO’s recommendation for review up the official ladder. 

On the ground, a BLO showed us the VIP module in operation. Confirming that all voters of his booth are available on this widget to be marked for this special status. Assembly election officials told us that the BLO’s recommendations would be reviewed before being uploaded on the ERONET and it could then be accessed and reviewed by the Chief Electoral Office of Delhi. 

VIP versus the Ordinary Citizen 

Missing a days’ pay, daily wage worker Jitendra Pandey stood in line at a voting centre in Shalimar Bagh in North Delhi in a queue of 20 voters. Even though his name is in the draft roll, he was served a notice for being unmapped. For the state, he isn’t a VIP voter so what happened after differs considerably from the elite.

Pandey who has lived in a jhuggi in Haiderpur village since 1998, expressed his exasperation, “The notice is in English, we are not literate enough to know what it is saying.” He said without his voter ID his children would get admission in Delhi schools, and his children will find it difficult to get their voter ID cards in the future. 

While Pandey stood in line, ECI resolved CM Gupta’s notice within hours of being shared on social media. Gupta too is a voter registered in the Shalimar Bagh constituency, in booth number 123. 

ECI guidelines say voters flagged under logical discrepancy or unmapped criteria will have to attend a hearing to make it to the final rolls. Gupta, officials say, was marked one of the 20 VIP voters at Shalimar Bagh constituency.

At Shalimar Bagh’s hearing centre, we found hearings were being conducted in three batches, each covering 63 booths. The first batch was booths 1 to 63, the second covered booths 64 to 126, and the third covered till 189. At the time of reporting, hearings for Gupta’s booth had not even started. 

We found that notices to voters mention the date and time of the hearing. Officials told us that they are only attending to applications sequentially booth-wise. For Gupta they made an exception. ECI has not finalised any new manual for the SIR, it has changed rules as it went along conducting the revision over different phases. In May, the Supreme Court gave it the liberty to draw the  SIR process as it deemed best. 

But it was not just for Gupta. This is the case for all VIP voters. Upon our visit to two assembly constituencies in south and central Delhi that possibly host the largest number of VIP voters in the city, we found that a new doorstep delivery facility has been created to handle such voters’ notices. 

“If an important voter gets flagged, I don’t issue a notice,” one AERO said. “I send a BLO to collect documents. The voter needn’t even be home; his guard can hand them over, and we photograph the guard for the record.” The AERO claimed that he had not even generated notices for any of the over 100 VIP voters in his constituency.

As reports of preferential treatment of VIP voters circulated, at least one district election office came with its own set of promotional videos, showing BLOs resolving notices at home. EROs in other areas confirmed sending similar instructions to their BLOs. 

Relatives of the VIP voters, the official said, are being treated in the same way. BLOs are directed with this task of ensuring that all VIP voters and their families are safely included in the voter rolls.  

As ECI keeps saying “no eligible citizen to be left out” on every press note, we found that VIP voters get the first pass while others are stuck proving their eligibility.