New Delhi/Ahmedabad
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday published the final lists for Gujarat after nearly three-and-a-half months of an intensive Special Review (SIR) process, reflecting an overall deletion of 13.4% compared to the voter list before the controversial process.
On October 27, before the elections began, there were 50.84 million people on Gujarat’s electoral roll. This number shrank to 43.47 million in the draft list published after the census phase on December 19. The final list published on Tuesday – after the claims and objections stage – included 44.03 million voters.
Following the release of the draft list, the IEC saw 956,121 additions and 395,555 deletions, with the number of voters rising by a net 560,566 voters.
The net addition at the claims and objections stage did not change the district-level trend in deletions shown in the draft list. Urban areas saw more deletions than rural areas. For example, Surat, Ahmedabad and Vadodara showed the highest percentage of deletions compared to the pre-SIR list, and Dang, Chota Udepur and Narmada showed the least. This was also the case at the draft stage, although Narmada and Chhota Udepur swapped places.
The net deletion in Surat, Ahmedabad and Vadodara compared to the pre-SIR list was 25.3%, 21.5% and 17.4%, respectively. These numbers were 25.7%, 23.2%, and 18.7%, respectively, at the draft stage.
In Dang, Chota Udaipur and Narmada, roll has shrunk by 3.5%, 5.9% and 6.4% respectively compared to pre-SIR levels. The percentage of deletions in these regions was 5.5%, 7.8%, and 7.4%, respectively, at the draft stage.
In absolute numbers, Ahmedabad recorded the highest net addition of 105,607 voters, taking the electorate to 4,912,548. Vadodara added 34,890 voters to 2,220,095, and Rajkot recorded a net increase of 33,421 voters, taking its total to 2,088,779. Surat added 15,844 voters, with the number of voters rising to 3,639,042.
Surendranagar was the only district to record a net marginal decline of 99 voters. In South Gujarat, Navsari added 6,887 voters, Valsad 4,698 and Tapi 5,195 while Dang registered a net increase of 4,092 voters and Botad 10,136.
Chief Electoral Officer Harit Shukla said that the process was completed within the stipulated time with broad popular participation. He said that 34 electoral officials in the region, 182 election registration officials, 855 election registration assistant employees, and 50,963 booth-level employees participated in this process, along with volunteers and representatives of political parties.
The SIR included door-to-door verification throughout the state, as BLOs distributed census forms, mapped and matched voter data, and identified names for expungement by death, permanent immigration and duplicate registration.
Before the exercise began, Gujarat’s electoral database had 50,843,436 names. During the audit, 43,470,109 counting forms were received and fully digitized. Claims and objections relating to the inclusion, deletion and correction of voter details between 19 December 2025 and 30 January 2026 have been accepted, verified and disposed of by 10 February 2026.
One possible reason for higher deletion rates in urban areas may be economic migration. There is a strong relationship between a district’s share of the state’s total deletions in the SIR and a district’s share of voter growth between 2012 (the first available voter count following the 2008 delimitation exercise) and 2025. These areas with high growth between 2012 and 2025, and high SIR deletions, are generally more urban areas of the state.
Other than Gujarat, SIR started on November 4 in 11 other districts – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. Of these, the final lists were published in Puducherry – where the lists shrank by 7.6% compared to the pre-SIR lists – and Lakshadweep, where the lists shrank by 0.4%. These numbers are lower than the 10.1% and 2.5% cuts seen at UTs respectively on the draft list.
