Karnataka published its final electoral roll on Tuesday, October 27, at the end of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), and the state now has 4,55,00,011 registered voters. That is 99.32 lakh fewer than the 5,54,32,314 people who were on the rolls before the exercise began, according to the office of the state’s Chief Electoral Officer, V. Anbukkumar.
Constituency-wise lists are now on the CEO’s website, and voters can check their names using their EPIC (voter ID) number.
What the final roll shows
Women now outnumber men on Karnataka’s rolls. The CEO’s office said the final list has 2,29,12,355 women, 2,25,40,493 men and 2,841 third-gender electors. More than 6.83 lakh voters are aged 18 or 19, and over 3.92 lakh are above 85.
The biggest cut came at the draft stage. When the draft roll was released on August 24, the electorate had fallen to about 4.46 crore, with more than 1.07 crore names left out as absent, shifted, dead, duplicate or ‘others’. During the claims and objections window from August 24 to September 23, officials said 10.08 lakh voters were added, 1.88 lakh were removed and 8.96 lakh entries were corrected. Hearings and the disposal of applications ran until October 22.
- Over 16.39 lakh names were dropped at the draft stage because the voters had died
- More than seven lakh were removed as duplicate entries
- About 3.83 lakh fell under an ‘others’ category, which the CEO’s office has said includes people who refused to sign
- The largest group were voters recorded as having shifted or not found at their addresses
Why the numbers are being questioned
Voters marked as shifted were not necessarily ineligible, but they had to apply again through Form 6 to get back on the list. Only 7,87,534 inclusion applications were received, and that figure also covers first-time voters. Notices were sent to about 43.8 lakh electors whose records could not be matched to earlier rolls or showed discrepancies.
Reports also show that at least 61,059 Form 7 deletion requests were filed by electoral registration officers themselves, without the reason that the rules make mandatory. Officials said the system generated these forms automatically with their digital signatures when voters could not be reached for hearings.
Background and what happens next
The revision began on June 30 and was the state’s first such exercise since 2002. About 60,000 booth-level officers went door to door collecting enumeration forms. The CEO’s office has said a special enrolment drive will follow to add genuine voters whose names were removed. People who applied after September 23 will appear in supplementary lists, which will be published every quarter.
The roll came out on the same day the Supreme Court heard petitions questioning the Election Commission’s handling of the nationwide SIR and the conduct of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant declined, for now, to order the commission to preserve its internal files, but said it would examine them. It also issued notice on a fresh plea about changes to the online Form 6 and tentatively listed the case for November 17.
