Former diplomat Navdeep Suri on Sunday flagged issues he faced amid the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Punjab, raising larger questions about the process for common citizens.
The decorated IFS officer explained that he was "facing trouble" proving his Indian citizenship, despite having represented New Delhi in three countries.
"I happen to have documents other than voter ID and Aadhaar card. But can’t help asking: If I have trouble establishing my citizenship after representing India in three countries, what’s the fate of the common citizen?" he wrote in an X post.
Suri's SIR ordeal
Suri explained that though he had submitted his Aadhar card and voter ID for the SIR process in Punjab, and though the Booth Level Officer (BLO) had told him that everything was in order, the officer flagged issues later on.
The BLO later told him that his details did not match with the SIR back in 2003, after which he was told to come again to collect the notice and prove his citizenship using "unspecified documents".
It was when he revealed that he had not been in India that year that he was asked to provide his passport to prove that he had been outside the country in 2003.
The ex-envoy, whose grandfather is the famous Punjabi poet and Jallianwala Bagh massacre survivor Nanak Singh, has served India abroad for over three decades as part of diplomatic missions in Cairo, Damascus, Washington, Dar es Salaam and London, in addition to other duties.
Suri was a key figure behind the initiative to introduce social media in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and its diplomatic missions in 2010. His contribution to boosting India-UAE ties even earned him the country’s second highest civilian award—the Order of Zayed II—in 2019.
First launched in Bihar in June 2025, the SIR has seen lakhs of voters' names—including deceased people—removed from electoral rolls ahead of various Assembly elections. Under this process, voters who were not included in the 2002/2003 electoral rolls are required to submit documents linking them to people included in those legacy rolls.
Actor-activist Prakash Raj is one of the latest famous faces after Suri to flag the SIR process. He claimed earlier this month that his name had been "deleted" from the voters' list in his constituency, as part of the ongoing SIR in Karnataka.
Pointing to his deep roots in the city, he questioned how authorities could delete someone who was born, raised, educated and even ran for Parliament in that very seat, adding that the process was necessary, but that the integrity of the system was flawed.
