Indian States Purge Millions From Electoral Rolls
Telangana and Uttarakhand are removing millions of voters from their electoral rolls following special intensive revisions to eliminate duplicate, deceased, and shifted entries.
Indian electoral authorities in Telangana and Uttarakhand have executed massive reductions in voter registries following Special Intensive Revision (SIR) processes. In Telangana, the electorate may shrink by 20%, falling below 2.7 crore voters. Draft rolls published August 17 showed 26,487,213 electors, a sharp decline from the previous year's 33,826,448.
C. Sudharsan Reddy, the Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana, announced that 7,123,526 electors were cleared for inclusion after authorities issued 9.1 million notices to resolve record discrepancies. However, approximately 7.3 million names were deleted, including 9.22 lakh deceased voters and 6.70 lakh duplicates. By the October 7 deadline for claims and objections, only 494,687 applications for new inclusions were received. The final rolls are scheduled for publication on November 9.
Simultaneously, the Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded mandatory field re-verification for 163,000 electors in high-density households to ensure accuracy. In Uttarakhand, a revision conducted between January 2025 and October 2026 resulted in the deletion of over 17 lakh names and the addition of four lakh, reducing the total registered voters from 84,29,459 to 71,58,949. Dehradun, Haridwar, and Udham Singh Nagar saw the highest deletions. Chief Electoral Officer BVRC Purushottam is now coordinating with national political parties for further implementation, while the Election Commission of India noted that missing voters may still apply for inclusion via Form 6.
