Delhi outreach: The ECI is holding special camps for young and first-time voters across Delhi colleges and universities on September 29–30, while intensifying voter-enrolment messaging aimed at Gen Z.
BY Navin Upadhyay
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India appears to be moving into damage-control mode after a series of controversies surrounding the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, with the poll panel now scrambling to demonstrate that no eligible voter — particularly young and first-time voters — will be left out.
The sequence is striking. In Goa, the Election Commission has been forced to address the case of 97 voters who were found eligible for inclusion by Electoral Registration Officers but were nevertheless left out of the final SIR roll after the required rollback facility was not made available in the ECINET system. Following the disclosure, the Goa Chief Electoral Officer said that many of the 97 have since been enrolled and that the remaining cases are being processed through house-to-house visits by Booth Level Officers.
The Goa episode has acquired added significance because the state CEO’s office had repeatedly written to the Commission seeking the facility to reverse the earlier deletions before publication of the final roll. The Indian Express reported that the requests went unanswered while the final roll was being prepared, leaving the 97 eligible voters outside the electoral roll.
Against that backdrop, the ECI has announced special enrolment camps for young voters aged 18 to 25 in Delhi on September 29 and 30, to be held at colleges, universities and other educational institutions. Booth Level Officers will be present with electoral rolls and Form-6 applications to facilitate enrolment of eligible young voters.
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The Commission’s emphasis on Gen Z and first-time voters is particularly notable because the controversy over SIR has increasingly centred on the barriers faced by people whose names are absent from earlier electoral rolls. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has alleged that a change to Form 6 requiring information about whether an applicant’s parents or grandparents appeared in an earlier SIR has created an additional hurdle for first-time voters. Those allegations are disputed and the ECI’s position on the change should be taken into account.
The timing of the youth campaign is also significant. The ECI is not merely holding camps; its public messaging is placing considerable emphasis on young voters, with the Commission’s digital platforms carrying material highlighting the participation of first-time voters and students in enrolment drives.
A #Throwback to the ELC & ECINET Conference in Goa, where young participants shared their learnings about elections and their role in the democratic process.
📍 Goa#ECI #ELC #ECINET pic.twitter.com/qprb5rrO7Z
— Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) September 25, 2026
The Commission has, in fact, used youth-focused voter campaigns before. Its 2024 “Turning 18” campaign was specifically designed to encourage first-time voters to enrol and participate in elections. What makes the present campaign different is the political context in which it has been launched — amid an intense dispute over SIR, deletions, Form 6 and the functioning of the Election Commission.
The Delhi camps come at a time when the capital’s SIR itself has generated a large number of applications. Between August 31 and September 24, more than 1.21 lakh Form-6 applications seeking inclusion in the draft roll were received in Delhi. The CEO has also announced separate camps for young voters, reinforcing the Commission’s message that eligible citizens should not be excluded from the electoral process.
The ECI’s official voter-services portal itself prominently carries links for SIR-2026, downloading electoral rolls and searching names in the electoral roll, reflecting the Commission’s effort to encourage voters to verify their status.
But the question is whether these measures are enough to address the concerns raised by the SIR exercise.
The Goa episode has exposed a problem that cannot be reduced simply to voter apathy or a failure by citizens to apply. In those 97 cases, according to the record cited by the Indian Express, voters had come forward with documents and objections; the local electoral authorities had examined their cases and concluded that they were eligible for inclusion. The problem was subsequently described by the Goa CEO as the absence of a mechanism in ECINET to reverse the earlier deletion.
The Commission’s subsequent decision to send BLOs to the affected voters’ homes and process their Form-6 applications is therefore significant. It demonstrates that the system can identify and correct omissions — but it also raises the question of why those voters had to undergo another enrolment process after their eligibility had already been established.
The controversy becomes still more consequential because being absent from an electoral roll can have implications beyond the ballot box in some states. In Goa, the electoral-roll status could affect access to the state’s health-support scheme for expensive treatments, including dialysis and other major medical procedures.
Against this background, the ECI’s sudden emphasis on “no eligible voter left behind,” special camps and Gen Z enrolment inevitably invites scrutiny. The Commission may regard the camps as routine voter facilitation; its critics see them as a response to mounting criticism over the SIR process.
Either way, the political optics are difficult to ignore: after eligible voters were reported to have been left out in Goa, the Commission is now going out of its way to demonstrate that it is reaching voters — especially young voters — rather than waiting for them to navigate the system themselves.
Whether this marks genuine course correction or merely an attempt to contain the fallout from the SIR controversies will depend on what happens to the thousands of voters whose names are currently missing, flagged or under verification — and, ultimately, whether the final electoral rolls contain all those who are legally entitled to be there.
