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The Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which began in June 2025, has led to over 13 crore names being deleted from the draft rolls in 30 states and Union Territories. Delhi and Maharashtra’s draft rolls showed a drop of 32.8% and 21.1%, respectively. According to data released by the Chief Electoral Officers of both places, the total number of electors fell from 1.45 crore pre-SIR to 97.53 lakh in the draft roll, and 9.78 crore to 7.71 crore, respectively.

In Karnataka, 19.54% votes were deleted and in Bengaluru, where I live, almost 50% have been flagged as Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate or Other (ASDDO). Out of 1.03 crore voters, 49.42 lakh have been flagged, including me – I stand disenfranchised, although I am alive and well.

Such a massive disenfranchisement/deletion of voters is due to the totally incompetent, arbitrary, autocratic and unprofessional manner in which the whole project was carried out throughout the country. The project was purely bureaucratic with untrained and poorly motivated junior part-time government officials called “Booth Level Officers” working under duress and delivering incomplete and dishonest results.

The oversight by Assistant Electoral Registration Officers and District Election Officers has been, at best, a sham. Loaded with their original work these officials pay only casual attention to the electoral rolls. The Election Commission itself was imperial and unresponsive and at its behest the Chief Electoral Officers behave like petty warlords. There are no checks and balances in the rolls finalised by these worthies.

Also read: SIR in Delhi: As One-Third of the Voters Left Out, Field Notes from a Haywire Process

All these factors combined have virtually destroyed the constitutional right of Universal Adult Franchise embedded in Article 326, which says:

“The elections to the House of the People and to the Legislative Assembly of every State shall be on the basis of adult suffrage; that is to say, every person who is a citizen of India and who is not less than eighteen years of age on such date as may be fixed in that behalf by or under any law made by the appropriate Legislature and is not otherwise disqualified under this Constitution or any law made by the appropriate Legislature on the ground of non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt or illegal practice, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter at any such election.”

The Election Commission has, so far, not proved that the deleted/disenfranchised voters fall under any of these categories of disqualification........

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