Hundreds of sex workers in Delhi’s GB Road red-light district are facing exclusion from the city’s electoral rolls amid a nationwide voter-verification exercise that has placed greater emphasis on documentary proof of eligibility.
The Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has resulted in millions of names being left out of Delhi’s draft electoral roll published on August 31. The exercise is intended to identify and remove ineligible voters, while officials have said the process is aimed at ensuring the accuracy of electoral registers.
But the requirements have created particular difficulties for people who lack stable family records, permanent addresses or other documents needed to establish their eligibility.
On GB Road, officials overseeing around 1,300 voters said about 650 sex workers had previously appeared on the electoral roll. Of those, at least 500 have either been classified as having moved away or have been unable to establish their eligibility because of missing documentation.
The figure represents more than three-quarters of the sex workers who were previously registered in the area.
Many of the affected women have lived in Delhi for years or decades but have limited documentation connecting them to their birthplace, parents or earlier electoral records. Some were trafficked as children and subsequently lost contact with their families, making it difficult to obtain birth certificates, school records or other documents.
One woman, identified as Beauty, said she obtained her voter identification card in 2008 after authorities verified her address on GB Road. She had subsequently voted in elections.
Under the current revision process, however, she struggled to produce the documents required to establish her eligibility. Although she has an Aadhaar card carrying her GB Road address, Aadhaar alone does not establish citizenship or eligibility to vote under the SIR process.
She was eventually left off the latest draft electoral roll.
The problem extends beyond the sex workers themselves. Their children can also struggle to establish family relationships where conventional records such as birth certificates or documents identifying both parents are unavailable.
A 23-year-old man whose mother was a sex worker said his name was also missing from the draft roll after questions were raised about documentation relating to his parentage.
Sex workers’ organisations have called for measures to prevent eligible people from being excluded because of circumstances beyond their control. Kiran Deshmukh, a sex worker and coordinator with the National Network of Sex Workers, said many women lack the documentary trail required by the new verification process because of trafficking, displacement and years spent outside formal systems.
Election officials, however, have said there is no separate verification procedure specifically for sex workers. Where voters cannot be mapped to previous records and cannot provide the required documents, their names may be removed under the established process.
The Delhi revision is not yet final. People whose names were omitted from the draft electoral roll can receive notices and submit claims or objections to challenge their exclusion. That stage is scheduled to continue until October 29.
The developments have raised broader questions about how electoral verification systems can accommodate citizens whose personal histories do not fit conventional documentation requirements, particularly people who have spent years living without stable addresses or complete family records.
For those affected on GB Road, the issue is not simply the loss of a name from a voter list. It also highlights the difficulty of proving eligibility within official systems when the documents being requested were never created or have become impossible to obtain.
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