For 29-year-old Suresh Kumar Patel, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was something he had paid little attention to. He would scroll past the occasional reel about it on his phone, while conversations about the exercise carried on among his neighbours.

A JCB driver, Patel had little reason to worry: his family had lived in Indira Camp for decades, and he had carefully filled out his enumeration form, that too in front of the booth level officer (BLO).

That confidence was shaken this Sunday, when a group of activists knocked on his door to tell him that his name had been deleted from the draft electoral roll. “I couldn’t believe it. I had filled in my details and my father’s details from the 2002 SIR in front of the BLO,” he said, showing a photograph of his completed enumeration form.

His father’s name had made it to the roll.…