India, Sept. 6 -- For 35 years, Sitaram's family in Haryana's Jind district had no idea where he was.

They had searched for him after he disappeared from a polio treatment centre in Punjab's Sangrur, but as the years passed without a trace, they eventually lost hope of finding him. At one point, the family even presumed that Sitaram was dead.

Then, last Wednesday, an old school record and a phone call changed everything.

Sitaram, now 55 and living in Amritsar, had returned to his native Manoharpur village to collect his School Leaving Certificate from the Government Senior Secondary School where he had studied up to Class 10. He needed the document for verification as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral ro...