Deletions in Karnataka’s draft SIR rolls alarming | Data

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A booth-level officer involved in the process of digitalising the details given in the enumeration form of a voter in Mangaluru. | Photo Credit: H.S. Manjunath

The draft electoral rolls released after the completion of the enumeration phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Karnataka on Monday (August 24, 2026) has revealed alarming levels of deletions, unprecedented when compared with other major States that saw high deletions during the enumeration phase.

With the deletion of 1.08 crore names from the rolls, the State, with 224 Assembly Constituencies (ACs), saw its electoral rolls shrinking by 19.5% from 5.54 crore to 4.46 crore — which is the removal of roughly one in every five voters who were there on the rolls before the SIR.

Though this was not the highest rate of deletions among major States during the enumeration phase with Telangana recently reporting 21.7% deletions , constituency-wise analyses show more worrying patterns in Karnataka.

The Election Commission of India (EC) has not released the electors to population in the 18+ age group (EP) ratio for any States during the SIR, which is mandatory during every electoral roll revision. The EP ratio gives an indication of under-enrolment or over-enrolment. While the EC has cited absence of Census data as the reason for not releasing EP ratio, many have raised concerns that the SIR is being undertaken with no estimation of the number of voters who should be there on the rolls.

The table below compares the population eligible to vote — taken from the report of the Union government’s Technical Group on Population Projections — with electors before and after the SIR in major States. Karnataka’s draft SIR roll is at least 67 lakh short of the estimated population eligible to vote. It is uncertain if this gap could be bridged to at least a reasonable extent, considering that roughly 44 lakh voters who are in the draft rolls are likely to be served notices for discrepancies.

The map shows where the deletions are concentrated. The core Bengaluru region saw the highest concentration of deletions. Outside the Bengaluru region, Gulbarga Dakshin saw the highest of 34% deletions. Its pre-SIR electorate of 2,97,785 voters dropped to 1,96,522 with more than one lakh voters in the rolls getting deleted.

The deletions seen in and around Bengaluru is unprecedented when compared with deletions seen in the highly urbanised capital cities of other States that have completed the SIR exercise.

Five constituencies — Bommanahalli (54.8%), Dasarahalli (52.1%), B.T.M Layout (51.6%), Vijayanagar (51.1%), and C.V. Raman Nagar (51.1%) — saw more than half of their electoral rolls getting culled. This is perhaps the first time in any of the major States where ACs have seen more than 50% deletions during the enumeration phase. Fifty per cent of the 1.08 crore deletions came from just 36 of the 224 ACs, of which 28 were in the core Bengaluru area.

Deletions were concentrated in most urban constituencies, in line with the pattern seen in other States.