New Delhi: With the Election Commission of India (EC) on the brink of completing the first phase of its Special Intensive Revision in nine states and three Union Territories, the expected cumulative number of deletions from the electoral rolls has shocked observers and politicians alike. So much so that when the pan-India lists are finalised next month, they might make the Bihar SIR deletions of 68.5 lakh voters pale in comparison.Consider the scale of deletions in Uttar Pradesh that, according to the EC, comprise duplications, deceased and permanently shifted or absent electors. The draft electoral rolls released by the commission have 2.89 crore electors fewer than the previous ones, nearly 18.70% of the total electorate of the state.Nearly 58 lakh electors – approximating 7.6% of the state’s total registered voters – have been stuck off from the previous electoral rolls in West Bengal. Similarly, 24.08 lakh electors, or 8% of the state’s electorate, were deleted from the rolls in Kerala. The SIR in Tamil Nadu entailed 97.3 lakh deletions.The outcome is similar for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states. Around 42 lakh electors were deleted in the preliminary electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh, while 41.85% electors’ names were removed from the electoral rolls in Rajasthan. In Gujarat, at least 73 lakh electors were deleted.Altogether, nearly 13% electors have been deleted in nine states, and three Union Territories, in which a large majority were found to have permanently shifted or absent.Also read: Post-Spectacle Polls, Impact of SIR and Other Lessons from Bihar Elections 2025Of course, these are preliminary figures and the EC has given a month’s time for applicants to raise objections and fill in Form 6 (normally meant for new voters) to be included in the final electoral rolls. The final number of deletions is likely to be around two or three per cent less than the currently known figure.However, what has bothered observers and political parties is the EC’s reluctance to release credible data that could help clearly understand the process it has followed for deletions and additions. The trust deficit between the EC and opposition parties has further muddied the waters.Trinamool Congress Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has shot off three letters to the EC raising objections to the deletions after the draft rolls for West Bengal were published. Her latest letter spoke about “opacity, arbitrariness and informality” in the SIR process, while calling it “unplanned, ill-prepared and ad-hoc”. She cited numerous examples of electors being wrongfully deleted, and alleged serious irregularities and procedural violations by the EC. She also claimed that the EC’s information technology systems were being misused to purge voters without the approval of electoral officers, violating the Representation of the People Act, 1951.Electoral staff segregate forms of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, December 11, 2025. The draft rolls deleted 97 lakh voters in the state, according to reports published later in December. Photo: PTI.The Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Left parties have objected to the SIR process in various states on similar grounds. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has not negated the necessity of an SIR but it has raised objections to the way it has been conducted.“What was meant to be a routine, transparent and citizen-friendly exercise has turned into a chaotic, arbitrary process that threatens both the integrity of the voter rolls and the safety of those forced to undertake that work,” the CPI(M) said in a statement that raised concerns about “impossible deadlines to the BLOs”, poor planning and the EC’s refusal to use its own duplicate-voter detection software.The DMK, on the other hand, has accused the Union government of using the SIR as a “political weapon” to intimidate the Dravidian party, and highlighted irregularities in the process.Also read: Verification or Disenfranchisement? People in Bengal, Tamil Nadu Struggle With SIRMany questions arise around the SIR, among which the most important are what political scientist and activist Yogendra Yadav has pointed out. He said that there is a “fundamental design flaw” in the SIR, unlike the previous 2002 SIR when an Electors’ Photo Identity Card or EPIC was issued to all voters.Yadav and other experts say that the onus of proving that one is a legitimate elector has been entirely passed on to the voter in the 2025 SIR.Yadav says, “The problem with the SIR… is not in the idea of an intensive revision of the voters’ list. The problem is with the two unprecedented and unnecessary design elements in the SIR – compulsion of enumeration forms and the requirement of proof of citizenship.”In the 2002 SIR, the EC began the process of revision in August 2001 when it allotted the first 31 days to “house numbering, appointment of enumerators, electoral registration officers and district electoral officers, their training, and the consolidation of existing electoral rolls, including the supplements of 2001 revision.”Once this preparatory work was done, a preliminary list was prepared by integrating all supplementary lists to bring electors of one area into the same polling booth. Following this, the trained enumerators just needed to visit all houses and verify each entry in the already-prepared list, and make corrections if necessary.Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa releases the draft electoral roll after the Special Intensive Revision exercise, in Lucknow, January 6, 2026. Photo: Nand Kumar/PTIThe 2025 process is fundamentally different. Here, enumerators weren’t trained at all. Rather, BLOs needed to distribute enumeration forms to everyone and collect them as well as enter the details in an impossibly short time, making the whole process hurried and ad hoc. The elector herself needs to fill up the enumeration form and then hand them over to the BLO.Additionally, there was no need in 2002 for electors to provide details of their names and addresses and their voter IDs and those of their parents in the previous SIR. However, 2025 SIR needs the electors to provide all such details, failing which they risk being struck off.The 2025 SIR was intended as a “prove your citizenship” exercise. The EC clearly told the Supreme Court that it has the power to test the citizenship of voters, and that seeking such a proof is not the sole domain of the Union Home Ministry. Shockingly, it also claimed that the EPIC, driving license or Aadhaar cards would not be acceptable as proof of citizenship, and electors need to bring out a different range of documents, including their family records, to prove their citizenship. It was only after the Supreme Court ordered the EC to allow Aadhaar as a valid proof that the SIR process – cumbersome and difficult for people to follow – became bearable for voters.There are other grave concerns. During the SIR in Bihar, many had feared that migrant workers might be left out of the electoral rolls simply because they would be away, working in far-off places when the BLO arrived to verify the voter lists. However, the SIR process in nine states in the current round has shown that the deletion of names may be an overarching problem for states which have do not maintain detailed records of migration.For instance, there were large scale deletions of electors even in Gujarat, though it is a net in-migration state. Yadav has convincingly highlighted that apart from Gujarat, even other states like Goa and Kerala, which are also net in-migration states, the deletions have been far greater than anticipated.Moreover, Yadav’s study shows that women have borne the brunt of SIR-induced disenfranchisement, as has happened in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, after Bihar and other states.Also read: Attempt to Make Bihar Workers Vote Here?’: Row as EC Includes Bihar SIR Extract Among ID ProofsYadav also discovered a grave anomaly in the SIR process conducted in Uttar Pradesh. Calling it “a freak natural experiment”, he said there were far more deletions in the centrally-organised SIR than in the State Election Commission’s revision of voter lists for the panchayat polls – though both exercises were conducted simultaneously.While the draft electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh showed 12.6 crore electors after deletions, the SEC-UP’s showed 16.1 crore electors, roughly tallying with the state’s adult population. The difference between the methods followed by the EC and the SEC-UP was that while the SIR entailed filling up enumeration forms and providing citizenship proofs, the other did not.What this comparison exposes is the real risk of mass disenfranchisement as a result of the SIR. “SIR is a disenfranchising monster let loose on the Indian voters,” Yadav concludes.An elderly infirm woman arrives with assistance for a hearing under the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists in Nadia, Bengal, January 5, 2026. Photo: PTIThere is yet another problem. Although the EC has released the data regarding deletions and has shared the numbers of the deceased, duplicate voters and absent electors, it has not revealed the number of those who could not fill the enumeration forms or return them duly filled to the BLOs. What is more, the EC has not released figures of those who could not share the details of their names and of their parents, as recorded in previous revisions of voter rolls.Both these categories of people – those who failed to fill or return filled-up forms and those who did not share details from previous revisions of voter lists – will likely be deleted from the final electoral rolls.Also read: EC Cries ‘Conspiracy’ Over Complaints Against CEC, CEO, But Faces Sharp Scrutiny For SIR’s ‘Descent Into Farce’The EC has also not revealed the number of infiltrators it has found in the SIR exercise, a huge issue that the exercise is purportedly mean to solve, according to the Narendra Modi government.The EC has asked applicants whose names have been wrongly deleted to fill up Form 6, which, in normal circumstances, is used to enrol new voters. By making deleted electors fill up this form, the EC will now induct people as new voters, in a way obfuscating its own wrongful deletions during the SIR.By keeping Form 6 as the only remedy for correcting erroneous exclusions in the draft rolls, the EC will only embolden the opposition’s claim that the SIR process lacked transparency.Opposition parties are protesting over legitimate concerns regarding the risk of mass disenfranchisement. Nearly 11 crore people may lose their voting rights at the end of the SIR in nine states and three Union Territories. The EC must ensure that such a possibility is prevented at any cost.