Unfriendly cuts: In Telangana and Karnataka electoral rolls

The Special Intensive Review (SIR) process by the Election Commission of India (ECI) is increasingly leading to a clear case of disenfranchisement in several parts of India. After a Supreme Court of India ruling allowed it to go ahead, SIR has now struck out a fifth of names from electoral rolls in Telangana and Karnataka – nearly 22% and 19.5% respectively – among the highest in the country. The sharpest cuts are in their capitals – five constituencies in Bengaluru lost more than half their voters, while nine of Hyderabad’s 15 saw a drop of more than 40%. Cuts of this kind cannot be just trimming puffy rolls at the edges. If accurate, the ECI’s own summary review processes have produced bloated rolls in recent elections, precisely in places with high net migration from the rest of India. And if the deletions are to be valid, those who were deleted from the list had to leave the states – a move within Karnataka or Telangana would only relocate the voter’s name on the same state list, not remove it completely. However, this is not confirmed either by data from recent surveys or by the government’s own population estimates.

During the Bihar SIR, the Court asked why so few objections were filed by political parties seeking the inclusion of wrongly deleted names; this question could apply to southern states as well. A probable reason could be that the voter card is only useful to a citizen once every few years, which leads to less willingness on his part. This may explain why a process that places the burden on the electorate produces cuts of this magnitude. Meanwhile, proving the smoking gun in data is difficult due to ECI’s opacity. It has not yet released the voter-to-population ratio for any state during the review, even though it is required and is the only test of underenrollment. The Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka did not even bother to publish the gender-wise breakdown of those deleted, instead scattering the lists on several Google Drive links without the old booth numbers, making verification difficult. The result of such indecency is visible in West Bengal, where the ECI’s dubious ‘logical discrepancy’ process has disenfranchised thousands of voters and forced them to seek redress in tribunals set up under the auspices of the court. Months after the election, records obtained under a Right to Information request show barely 82,000 of nearly 38 million appeals to 19 tribunals have been decided, with more than 90% of those decisions favoring voters seeking renewal. The ECI—an institution once the envy of even wealthier democracies for bringing large numbers of Indians to the polling booth—is now an obstacle to universal adult franchise.

Published – 29 Aug 2026 0:20 AM IST