New Delhi: The combined voter base of Mizoram, Odisha, Manipur and Sikkim has shrunk by 22 lakh, after as many number of voters were left out of the draft electoral rolls in these states where at present the third phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists is being conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI).Odisha has emerged as the state with the highest number of voter deletions, with the eastern state accounting for 20.11 lakh voters who were dropped from draft electoral rolls during the SIR, reported Press Trust of India.The PTI report added that while the collective voter base of these four states stood at 3.68 crore before the SIR exercise, it has now dropped to 3.46 crore.The third phase of the SIR was rolled out on May 14. At the time of the SIR rollout, the combined voter base of the 16 states and three Union territories where the SIR is presently being conducted stood at 36.73 crore.In the first two phases, covering 13 states and Union Territories with close to 590 million voters, over 6.3 lakh BLOs and 9.2 lakh party-appointed agents were part of the process.The SIR process was mired in controversies in West Bengal as 2.7 million voters were left to wait for their fate to be decided by 19 judicial tribunals less than two weeks before polls, with even the Supreme Court refusing to grant interim relief. The tribunals eventually decided on a minuscule number of cases before polling day.As reported by The Wire, in 150 seats, more than half of West Bengal’s 294, total deletions were greater than victory margins, and out of these the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 99. In 2021, it had won just 19 of these.Opposition parties have said that the SIR exercise is aimed at targeting electors not aligned with the BJP and its allies.