The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Sunday published the draft electoral rolls of three states after the first phase of Special Intensive Review (SIR), with Sikkim accounting for the largest percentage of deletions at 8.01%, followed by Manipur at 7.58% and Odisha at 6.02%.
Among the draft lists released on Sunday, in absolute terms, Odisha saw the biggest shrinkage in its lists, with 2.01 million voters removed from the initial list of 33.3 million. It was followed by Manipur, which lost 158,677 out of 2.09 million voters, and Sikkim, where 37,724 out of 471,018 names were deleted.
This is certainly the first phase of the exercise of SIR in these states which began on 30 May. The process will now move to the Claims and Objections phase (from July 5 to August 4), where eligible voters who were excluded can apply for inclusion via Form 6, and objections can be raised against unlawful inclusions.
Electoral Registration Officers and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers will then examine these claims and objections, and hold hearings where appropriate. Final lists will be published on September 6.
Sunday’s lists sparked a political storm in Odisha, as they did across the country.
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The opposition Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which ruled the state for 24 years until 2024, said exclusions were disproportionately high.
“More than 20,000 (two million) names of more than 27,000 (2.7 million) voters have been deleted from the rolls. They have hidden the names of another 700,000 voters,” BJD Vice President Debi Prasad Mishra said.
Senior BJP leader and MLA Babu Singh defended the SIR, asserting that no real name of the voter was deleted from the list.
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Responding to the BJP’s allegations, Singh said, “Only duplicate entries and names of deceased persons have been removed,” adding that Bangladeshi voters will not be allowed to remain in the rolls. He further asserted that the Election Commission does not work for any political party.
In Manipur, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Arun Kumar Sinha said in a statement: “No one can remove a person from the draft electoral roll unless he is given an opportunity to be heard. Only after the order to speak is heard and approved, can a person’s name be removed from the draft electoral roll.”
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His Odisha counterpart R S Gopalan said, “When the SIR process started, there were 3.33 crore voters; 20 lakh voters were deleted and now we have three crore voters remaining at this stage.”
“Citizens whose names were deleted from the draft list will have the opportunity to request inclusion during the claims and objections period,” Sikkim CEO Raj Kumar Yadav said.
