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.

But the affected block’s RWA president K K Tiwari brandished a regularisation certificate issued by the Congress before the Delhi Assembly elections. “Most of these colonies are on agricultural land and has come up in the last 15 years. There were no boundaries here.” He said former Congress MLAs of the area had included them within Delhi’s limits.

Incidentally, Pratap Nagar is part of the Gokulpuri Assembly seat, which has now been added to the North-East parliamentary constituency after delimitation. It used to be part of East Delhi earlier.

Resident of a colony next door R K Sharma said: “It is a political tussle. These colonies are considered a Congress belt, but now we have a BSP MLA. They want our names out because they want to diminish the Congress vote. All unauthorised colonies along the seven kilometre border here have similar complaints.” BSP MLA Surinder Gupta refused to comment on the matter. But BJP councillor Manoj Tyagi said: “If there has been a valid complaint, the election commission should act on it.”

Meanwhile, residents of Saboli want these people out because they do not wish to share the resources of electricity and water. And that is precisely why 3-year-old Poonam Devi is worried today. Carrying her electricity bill, her voter and ration cards, she asked: “If we don’t have our names on that list, how shall we vote? If we don’t have an MP or an MLA, how can we have water or electricity?”