Voter base shrinks by 7.93% after SIR across 9 states, UTs; Gujarat drops 68 lakh names

New Delhi: Final electoral rolls in nine of the 12 states and union territories where Special Intensive Revision was conducted have shrunk by 7.93% or 1.70 crore voters with Gujarat reporting the highest proportion of net deletion at 13.4% and Kerala the least at 3.22% among bigger states.

The number of voters in Andaman and Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Puducherry, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were pegged at 21,45,62,215 at the start of SIR on 27 October, 2026 but it has come down to 19,75,33,701 now with net deletions at 1,70,28,514.

While the rolls of Puducherry and Lakshadweep were out on February 14 and Gujarat on February 17, the voter list of six others were published on Saturday.

If one takes Bihar, where the SIR was conducted first last year ahead of Assembly elections, also into account, the number of net deletions will come to 2.16 crore or 7.37%. The electoral roll in Bihar shrunk from 7.89 crore in June 2024 to 7.43 crore in September 2024.

The rolls of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and UP – where the SIR started with the other nine states and UTs – will come later. The Tamil Nadu list will come on Monday while part of the West Bengal list will come on February 28 and the remaining after judicial scrutiny. The UP list will come on April 6.

During the SIR, people were given an opportunity to register as new voters if their names were not there in the draft rolls as also one could apply for deletion of voters. Some names were deleted despite being in draft rolls as they were not mapped with 2002-2003 SIR rolls and could not provide proof.

Gujarat witnessed the highest net change of 13.4% or 68.12 lakh in electoral rolls as it shrunk from 5.08 crore to 4.40 crore. Madhya Pradesh came second in number of net deletions at 34.35 lakh though its proportion was comparatively less at 5.96% as voters declined from 5.74 crore to 5.39 crore.

The number of voters in Rajasthan saw a decline of 31.36 lakh (5.74%) from 5.46 crore to 5.15 crore while Chhattisgarh saw a decline of 24.99 lakh – a higher proportion of 11.77% compared to other bigger states – from 2.12 crore to 1.87 crore voters.

Kerala had the lowest proportion of decline in voters at 3.22% or 8.97 lakh – from 2.78 crore to 2.69 crore. Goa had a 10.76% or 1.27 lakh decline in voter rolls from 11.85 lakh to 10.57 lakh.

Among the union territories, Lakshadweep’s voter list shrunk by just 206 or 0.36% – the island now has 57,607 voters as against 57,813 voters earlier. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have the highest proportion of 16.87% or 52,364 net deletions as its voter list declined from 3.10 lakh to 2.58 lakh.

Puducherry has registered a decline of 7.5% or 77,367 voters – from 10.21 lakh to 9.44 lakh.

In Assam, the Election Commission has conducted a Special Revision instead of SIR, owing to legal hurdles posed by an incomplete National Register of Citizens (NRC) process. According to the final rolls published earlier this month, Assam has 2.49 crore voters as against 2.52 crore voters in a draft list prepared after the SR. Assam had 2.45 crore voters for 2024 Lok Sabha polls.