New Delhi: The special intensive revision (SIR) of Karnataka’s voter rolls has concluded, with the exercise lopping off close to a crore names from the state’s electorate as it stood shortly before the distribution of enumeration forms.Published after the roughly four-month-long SIR, Karnataka’s final electoral rolls contain 4,54,55,689 (4.55 crore) names, a hefty 99.77 lakh less than the 5,54,32,314 (5.54 crore) that were present days before enumeration forms began being handed out.Compared to the electorate as on June 16, the final rolls published on Tuesday (October 27) are 18% smaller.As on the former date, 5.54 crore enumeration forms accounting for the state’s electorate were generated. Of these, 4.46 crore (80.5%, leaving a gap of 19.5%) were returned and as many names made it to the draft list published on August 24.During the claims and objections stage of the SIR that followed, 10.08 lakh names were greenlit for inclusion in the final rolls while 1.88 lakh others were marked for deletion, a majority of them on the stated grounds that they permanently shifted. As a result, a net 8.2 lakh names were added to the draft rolls.Of the 4.55 crore entries in the final rolls, 2.25 crore are male, 2.29 crore are female and 2,841 are of a third gender, the office of Karnataka’s chief electoral officer (CEO) said in a compendium released on Tuesday. Apart from the 4.55 crore general electors there are also 44,322 service electors registered in the state.Electors aged 30-39 make up the biggest age group in the southern state’s final rolls, constituting some 23% of the total. Those in the age groups 40-49 (21%) and 20-29 (19%) come next.Although electoral officials accounted for 5.54 crore voters in the fortnight before enumeration forms began being distributed, media reports had cited the CEO as saying during the pre-SIR ‘mapping’ exercise in Karnataka that the state’s 2025 voter rolls contained 5.57 crore individuals. Compared to that figure, Tuesday’s final rolls have 1.02 crore fewer entries.Over 65 lakh people were excluded from the draft rolls themselves, with electoral officials determining that they had permanently shifted. Another 19 lakh were excluded on grounds of ‘absence’ while ten more lakh were left out on the basis that they had died.Ever since it began in Bihar in June last year, the SIR has been highly controversial over the scale of deletions it has precipitated, the method of its rollout and concerns that it has disproportionately impacted marginalised citizens.Karnataka’s SIR has also been in the spotlight amid reports that individuals and booth-level agents of the BJP attempted to file Forms 7 – seeking the deletion of names from the rolls – in bulk quantities, with most of these applications in a host of cases targeting Muslims.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.