Election Commission Scrutinizes Millions of Voters in Telangana and Karnataka

The Election Commission of India is conducting a nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, leading to the scrutiny of millions of voters in Telangana and Karnataka. In Telangana, the commission published draft rolls for 119 Assembly constituencies on August 17, 2026, after collecting over 26 million enumeration forms. The process identified 922,000 deceased electors and 5.7 million who were absent or permanently shifted.

Further scrutiny in Telangana targets approximately 92 lakh voters who must now prove their authenticity. This group includes 60 lakh unverified or anomalous voters and 32 lakh individuals with incomplete mapping corrections. The commission is issuing notices based on 11 types of logical discrepancies, such as mismatched parent details or age gaps. This follows a ruling by the commission on August 11 that Family Register Certificates introduced by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy are not designated SIR documents, a decision that followed objections from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Simultaneously in Karnataka, civil society organizations led by actor Prakash Raj met with Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar to report significant lapses in the SIR process. The delegation alleged that 1.09 crore voters were categorized as shifted, dead, duplicate, or otherwise, with deletion rates exceeding 60 percent in roughly 3,000 polling booths, particularly in Bengaluru. The groups demanded a three-month extension of the process and mandatory door-to-door verification by Booth Level Officers before any deletions are finalized.