Wrap your mind around this: over the three phases of the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls in India, we have seen the deletion of 13 crore names so far, and it is estimated that by the time the Election Commission of India (ECI) is done with this exercise, the number will swell to 15 crore. India’s estimated adult (voting age-eligible) population is 97–99 crore.

Consider the following:

Maharashtra, covered in SIR/Phase 3, has seen the highest drop in absolute numbers — 2.06 crore (or 21 per cent). In Uttar Pradesh (SIR/Phase 2), 2.04 crore names have been deleted (~19 per cent). In Karnataka (SIR/Phase 3), 1.07 crore names (19.5 per cent). These three account for the highest absolute numbers of deletions.

The SIR draft roll for Maharashtra, which was published on 31 August, has 7.72 crore voters, which is 2.06 voters less than the state’s pre-SIR baseline. Curiously, as MP and Congress national spokesperson Pawan Khera has pointed out, between the Lok Sabha election in May 2024 and the Assembly election later that year, the same ECI had reason to add 40 lakh new voters to the state’s electoral list. The Congress and other Opposition parties had at the time flagged the abnormal increase in the space of five months, and the ECI maintained the additions were all bona fide.

Delhi (Phase 3) has the dubious distinction of recording the highest percentage drop — nearly 33 per cent of its pre-SIR electorate are out of the draft roll. That’s nearly one in three voters. It has a large working class migrant population, and a study published in The Wire found that the 47.56 lakh deletions in Delhi are heavily skewed towards working-age men in temporary, informal housing; mainly migrant, blue-collar workers from Poorvanchal.

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