LUCKNOW: The final voter list in Uttar Pradesh released by the Election Commission of India on Friday has left the ruling BJP camp worried.
The statistical account indicates that the number of deleted voters in constituencies of as many as 40 ministers is 2 to 10 times higher than the victory margin secured in the 2022 Assembly polls.
Such constituencies are spread over both urban and rural areas.
Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak was left shocked as over 1.25 lakh voters were removed from his Lucknow Cantonment constituency, which he had won by a margin of about 39,000 votes.
Nearly 1 lakh names were deleted from the Shahjahanpur seat, the assembly segment of UP Finance Minister Suresh Khanna. Khanna's victory margin was only 9,313 votes. Notably, he has been winning from this seat for nine consecutive terms.
Deletion of a lakh names may dent his prospects in 2027. These figures appear to be a warning signal for several ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government.
However, they are relatively reassuring for the Chief Minister, as only 33,000 names were deleted from his Gorakhpur Urban seat, where he had won by a margin of over 1 lakh votes.
The highest deletion was 3.16 lakh voters in the Sahibabad assembly seat represented by Sunil Sharma, who holds the IT portfolio in the Yogi government. Sharma had won the seats by a huge margin of 2.15 lakh votes in 2022.
Cabinet Minister Anil Kumar had won Purkazi by 6,532 votes, but 31,808 names have been removed, now. Similarly, MSME Minister Rakesh Sachan won Bhognipur by 11,893 votes, while 40,086 names stand deleted.
As a few exceptions, Om Prakash Rajbhar, chief of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and Panchayati Raj Minister, won the Zahoorabad seat in Ghazipur by 45,632 votes, while 39,447 names were removed from his constituency.
Labour Minister Anil Rajbhar won Shivpur by 27,687 votes, with 25,161 deletions recorded.
Overall, among 100 Assembly seats where 80,000 to 3 lakh names were deleted, 90 seats are represented by Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs.
Meanwhile, the final electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh have been published in Hindi and Urdu in 46 of the total 403 assembly segments, and at least 30 per cent of the population can read Urdu.
As per the statistical analysis of the final electoral roll, the net deletion of voters is significantly higher in BJP-won seats than in those held by the Samajwadi Party.
Political parties believe that the constituencies where the voters' list has been published in Urdu are Muslim-dominated, as more than 30 per cent of the population there speaks Urdu.
Around 36 of these 46 segments are in western UP.
Both the BJP and the SP had bagged almost equal seats of the total 46 segments.
While SP won 23 seats, roughly half, with an average margin of 27,517 votes, the BJP won 22 seats, with an average victory margin of 17,832 votes.
Significantly, CM Yogi Adityanath had been expressing repeated concern regarding the deletion of names under SIR.
Last year, on December 14, Yogi had raised the issue during the BJP state president election, expressing apprehension about nearly three crore voters being reduced in SIR.
He had clarified that most of the seats where votes were decreasing belonged to the BJP.
CM Yogi had also passed on this information to the then BJP president JP Nadda during his Lucknow visit.
In the coordination meeting of the RSS, BJP, and the government, the CM had also stated that 80,000 to 3 lakh votes could be reduced in the constituencies of 70 BJP MLAs.
Another interesting factor that has emerged after the release of the final list is that there has not been much difference in the number of deletions in rural and urban areas.
District-wise figures indicate that Bundelkhand recorded comparatively lower reductions, with 8.86, 8.55, 6.88, and 6.66 per cent deletions in Banda, Mahoba, Hamirpur and Lalitpur, respectively.