A revised draft voter list published on December 19 puts the number of voters at around 2.3 million. | Photo credit: B. VELANKANNI RAJ
After a special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu, the number of voters in most of the Assembly constituencies in Chennai and its three neighboring constituencies is greater than the votes polled during the 2021 and 2024 assembly elections.
In only four constituencies, all in the city, did the number of polled votes exceed the revised electoral strength in 2021. The four places were Villivakkam, RK Nagar, Perambur and Anna Nagar where the margin of difference ranges from 206 in Perambur to 1,386 in Villivakkam to 2,961 in Anna Nagar to 8,671 in RK Nagar.
A comparison of polled votes and existing strength in the 37 Assembly constituencies falling under Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram and Chengalpattu districts, apart from Chennai, provides interesting details. These four constituencies experienced a very high rate of erasure of names from electoral rolls. While examining the data, the fact that the state witnessed two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 21 has also been taken into account, causing a large number of deaths.
In 2021, an average of almost 2 million people voted in each constituency, and in 2024, 1.85 million people voted. A revised draft of the electoral rolls released on Friday (December 19) puts the number of voters at about 2.3 million.
Political parties in general, especially the ruling ally DMK, have expressed concern over the rate of deletions, while the AIADMK has claimed that most of the deleted entries belong to fake voters. However, the overall picture of voter strength does not indicate any discrepancy in terms of voters in the 37 assembly constituencies, even though only a draft voter list has been released.
Published – 21 Dec 2025 20:10 IST
