Electoral Roll Revisions: Opposition Claims 130 Million Deletions Amidst 21-Year Gap

Opposition parties opposing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls have repeatedly given a figure of 130 million deletions, including dead, transferred, duplicate and disputed. But one thing is being deliberately ignored: the figures would have been even lower had there not been a gap of 21 years. The SIR, which was initially conducted every five years, went into a seven-eight-year hiatus after 1984 and was almost forgotten since 2004. Meanwhile, in 2012, some changes were made in the ERO handbook due to which deletion of dead or transferred voters also almost stopped. The SIR has been held eight times before 2025. It has been in a gap of five to seven years till 2004. Its sequence was broken when the Election Commission in 2012 replaced the SIR with a special summary revision (SSR) of the electoral rolls to keep the electoral rolls clean. It has been a priority for the SSR for the last two decades.