BENGALURU: Election officials have decided to take a relook at electoral data where deletions have been high, and a drastic change in the number of electors has been recorded. Special drives will also be held and camps set up in the coming days to include any eligible electors who were left out.
This has come a day after the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka, released the final electoral roll after completion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), in which 99,32,303 electors were deleted. Karnataka now has 4,55,00,011 electors, compared to 5,54,32,314 previously.
A senior Election Commission official said constituencies, wards and booths where large differences have been recorded will be picked for verification. Data at the head office will be compared with ground reports. Apart from conducting independent inquiries, information will be sought from Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and District Election Officers (DEOs). The Election Commission has also directed all officials to conduct special drives to enrol electors.
Data from the CEO office showed the maximum deletion of electors was recorded in Bangalore Urban district. The district had 40,21,039 electors before the SIR exercise began, it now has 24,01,939. In BBMP South district, 21,44,784 electors dropped to 11,13,554 electors at the end of the SIR exercise. Large number of deletions were recorded in BBMP North and BBMP Central districts too.
Around 5 lakh electors were removed from the rolls in Belagavi, Mysuru and Kalaburagi, with 1-2 lakh electors being deleted from each of the districts. The least number of deletions were recorded in Udupi, Chamarajanagar and Kodagu districts. Officials said most of those deleted in these districts were migrant labourers.
In Bengaluru, the maximum deletion of names was recorded in Bengaluru South assembly constituency -- it has 4,41,232 electors from the earlier 7,85,800. Rajarajeshwarinagar, which had 5,17,859 electors, now has 2,81,687 voters. In Mahadevapura, the number of electors dropped from 6,87,471 to 4,10,671.
“Though it is known that most of the voters deleted from Bengaluru’s electoral rolls have their vote elsewhere, and hence did not submit Form-6 for inclusion, or had duplicate voters IDs, a special verification drive will be done in the city. We have received many forms for inclusion and correction after the end of the claims and objections period, once they are included, the number of electors will again increase in the supplementary electoral rolls which will be published in January 2027,” the official added.