Nearly 2,000 residents in the Capital’s North-East parliamentary constituency have fallen on no man’s land along the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border and will not be able to vote in the coming elections.

The Delhi Electoral Office has cancelled the names of these voters from the E block of Pratap Nagar and Gokulpur villages after a complaint by residents of the nearby Saboli village in Seemapuri.

Both these villages are unauthorised colonies, spread over agricultural land. But their homes have sprung up on land that belongs to the Uttar Pradesh government, officials have said. Both Pratap Nagar and Saboli are off Loni Road and the Ashok Nagar flyover, that later leads to the neighbouring state barely half a kilometre away.

Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer Satbir Silas Bedi said: “A residents’ welfare association (RWA) made the complaint when the draft rolls were being finalised. Investigation showed that these voters lived in UP though they had voter identity cards of Delhi. We have cancelled the cards and are checking on the history of voting from the area.”

These blocks are separated from the other blocks of Pratap Nagar by kaccha roads and piles of garbage. They even had polling stations marked from 102 to 110. There are at least 700 households here.

Bedi said the polling booths have been cancelled too. Many voters, she said, reportedly had UP election cards also. The border between the two states is hard to ascertain here in the clutter of unauthorised construction, leaking drains and piles of garbage, with the two states separated from each other by a thin strip of land used to grow vegetables.

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