From not having anyone (spouse/parents/grandparents) they can link themselves to, to struggling to locate their own names in the electoral rolls because of repeated changes in address and identity, women — particularly single women, widows, separated and the destitute — say they are facing disproportionate challenges during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
While the distribution of enumeration forms has been completed across Karnataka, many women told The Hindu that they are unsure whose details they are expected to provide now. Most said they have spent years living with siblings, relatives or friends who are neither spouses nor parents or grandparents — the only relationships accepted for voter linkage under the exercise.
Booth Level Officers (BLOs), as well as volunteers at citizen-led help desks, said they have encountered similar issues. They noted that women from vulnerable sections are finding it harder than men to establish the required electoral linkage. “In many cases, men have continued living with their parents or have easier access to family records, whereas women often lose touch with their parental homes after marriage or separation,” a BLO said.
Even among married women, literacy and documentation remain major hurdles. Many women from marginalised communities said they do not even possess a matriculation certificate, one of the documents accepted by the Election Commission of India. Several said they had not studied beyond primary school and possess only a handful of documents, many of which contain discrepancies in names or age, and are not even under the ECI’s list of documents.
Name-related inconsistencies are one of the most common problems. Women reported spelling variations, changes in surnames after marriage and, in many cases, entirely different names across documents and electoral rolls. BLOs said such cases were particularly common among Dalit and Adivasi women.
“In many cases, our surnames reveal our lineage and caste, which exposes us to discrimination. So we started using surnames like Kumar or Kumari, but different documents carry different versions. Sometimes, because we migrate to different districts due to our social conditions, we even change our names,” a woman from D.J. Halli said.
She added, “Many times, if a woman is single or a widow, she faces harassment and stigma. For our safety, some of us change our names altogether. Now the forms have come to the address where we last voted, but our names are different in the 2002 and 2025 electoral rolls.”
Several women also said they married at a young age and were never allowed to possess identity documents in their own names.
“My husband never allowed me to get a ration card because he did not want anything to come in my name. After my daughter was born, I separated from him. I have a ration card now, but nothing else to prove that I was born here,” said a 32-year-old domestic worker from Ulsoor. She said she has lived in the area all her life but has no contact with her family after separating from her husband.
Even during the pre-enumeration mapping exercise, married women were wrongly linked to their “fathers-in-law” instead of their fathers by the BLOs.
Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) V. Anbu Kumar, however, maintained that voters facing such issues can submit the enumeration form without filling in the 2002 details. In cases where a voter has been incorrectly mapped, they can inform the BLO, who can “unmap” the voter where necessary.
However, leaving the 2002 details blank would trigger a notice, requiring the voter to respond by producing one of the 11 prescribed documents. For many of these women, the primary concern goes beyond mapping issues, as they do not possess the required documents in the first place.
The ECI has also stopped disclosing gender-wise details for Phase III States. In Phase-II states such as West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, more women than men were deleted from the electoral rolls.
Published - July 25, 2026 07:00 am IST