New Delhi: A year after the Election Commission of India highlighted the removal of “foreign illegal immigrants” as one of the objectives of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls and following several speeches by government representatives and leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party endorsing the contentious SIR for this very reason, a report by the Hindustan Times‘ Himanshi Dahiya notes that in six states where the electorate comes to around 9.86 crore, only 1,600 names were identified as foreigners.The BJP has been keen to establish the SIR as part of its “detect, delete, and deport” policy. Exactly a year ago, in 2025, Union home minister Amit Shah had said that only those who were “infiltrators” had been removed in the Bihar SIR.“If they were Indian nationals, they would have given proof of that. You or I don’t have a problem. Whatever we are asked for, we will furnish, our documents. Out of those who were deleted, only three appeals have come in. If something was wrong, would appeals have been filed or not? This means, those who were deleted were not Indian nationals. It is their names which were deleted,” Shah said.As the Hindustan Times report observes, the number of suspected foreign nationals detected till now is minuscule compared to the electorate and the scale of deletions in this exercise. The SIR has now deleted 13 crore names. Protests against this exercise have spread across India, with opposition parties and youth calling for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.HT reached out to the Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) offices in the 26 states and Union territories where SIR was completed or the draft rolls were published. Officials from 11 states responded to the paper, but only six gave Dahiya a count of suspected foreigners. Notably, four states or UTs said they did not maintain the data. Among them was Odisha. “We did find suspected foreign nationals on the rolls but didn’t keep any figures,” an Odisha state official was quoted as having said.The report also quotes a senior Election Commission as having said that “states were not asked to collect this data separately.” The official then goes on to say, “We also don’t have combined or state-wise data on this. If any such cases came up, they were placed under the ‘Others’ category in ASDDO. But ECI has not asked them to provide these details.”In Karnataka, the CEO’s office said 716 foreign nationals were identified for removal, including 545 Nepalese citizens in Bengaluru North. The state’s electorate now has 99.77 lakh names less out of the 5.54 crore that were present days before enumeration forms began being handed out.Karnataka chief electoral officer V Anbukkumar said his office had “detected foreigners” and that “their number is definitely less than 1,000.”The HT report offers a breakdown of the states which recorded “foreign nationals”.Uttarakhand CEO B.V.R.C. Purushottam questioned whether it was even possible. “How could we collect this data? This is beyond the scope of election officials,” he said.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.