SIR: Deletions go up in Phase 3 with more marked as ‘Shifted’ or ‘Absent’

Kochi Kerala 28/11/2025. Kadavanthra Booth Level Officer (BLO) at the help desk, which will run throughout the SIR exercise, help voters fill up the enumeration forms besides offering other necessary support in Kochi. Photo by H Vibhu. | Photo Credit: H.VIBHU Phase 3 of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in 19 States and Union Territories (UTs) is witnessing notably more deletions during the enumeration phase, when compared with the States and UTs where the SIR process happened during the first two phases.Of the 19 States/UTs, 17 have already released their draft SIR rolls except Nagaland and Tripura. The map below shows the phase in which the SIR exercise happened in each State or Union territory. SIR has not been announced by the Election Commission (EC) for Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh.Significant jumpThe 17 States and UTs combined had a total of 36.1 crore voters in the electoral rolls before the SIR. This came down to 29.9 crore in the draft SIR rolls following the deletion of 6.15 crore (17.1%) names.This is 4.8 percentage points higher than the 12.8% of deletions witnessed during the enumeration phase of the 13 STates and UTs that underwent the SIR in the first two phases. This included Bihar, where the SIR first happened. These 13 States and UTs had a total of 58.9 crore voters before the SIR, which shrank to 51.7 crore in the draft SIR rolls, due to the deletion of 7.22 crore names (12.3%). The table here shows the phase-wise deletions during the SIR.While the final rolls are yet to be released for States and UTs in Phase 3, the patterns from Phase 1 and 2 show that the magnitude of deletions are unlikely to come down significantly. The net deletions in the first two phases changed only marginally from 12.3% to 10.5% in the final rolls.The chart below shows how deletions have markedly increased in Phase 3. The chart includes only those States and UTs that had at least one crore voters before the SIR. Among these, only two — Tamil Nadu and U.P. — saw more than 15% deletions in draft rolls during the first two phases. In contrast, six have seen more than 15% deletions in Phase 3, of which four — Delhi, Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra — have seen deletions of 20% (one-fifth) or more.The Election Commission has not provided any reasons for the inexplicable rise in deletions. Phase 3 States being highly urbanised cannot explain the increased deletions since States such as Tamil Nadu, Keralam and Gujarat — which are also highly urbanised — did not see such high deletions during Phase 2. The Hindu has pointed out that the deletions in the urban centres of Phase 3 States and UTs such as Hyderabad in Telangana, Mumbai in Maharashtra and Bengaluru in Karnataka are of a higher magnitude than the deletions in the urban centres of Phase 2 States, such as Chennai in Tamil Nadu or Ahmedabad in Gujarat.On the other hand, among the States that are not urban, Jharkhand has seen 16.5% deletions in Phase 3, when compared with the 12.9% deletions in Chhattisgarh in Phase 2.Change in reasons for deletionsAnother bewildering trend in Phase 3 is that a higher magnitude of deletions is being accompanied by an increasing share of people deleted for reasons marked as “Permanently Shifted” or “Untraceable/Absent”.Consequently, the share of deletions under reasons “Deceased” or “Duplicate (Already enrolled)” has come down. A well-defined process that is uniformly applied is unlikely to cause such a difference in reasons for deletions between different phases. The chart below shows a marked change in reasons for which names were dropped in the draft SIR rolls during Phase 3.Interestingly, more States are also reporting deletions with reason marked as “Others” in Phase 3. While around 9.73 lakh names have been deleted under this category, as per the press statements issued by the Chief Electoral Officers, an analysis of the full lists of deletions by The Hindu observed that, so far, for Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Telangana not a single person’s reason was marked as “Others” in the system, indicating that they were all clubbed under the ‘Absent’ category. Published - September 16, 2026 12:53 pm IST