The Election Commission of India’s hasty conduct of the special intensive revision of rolls in Tamil Nadu has unleashed chaos and threatened the foundation of fair elections. This newspaper’s rigorous data-driven investigation, backed by on-ground scrutiny, has opened a Pandora’s box of operational shortcomings and arbitrariness. A staggering 97.4 lakh voters in the state were purged during the SIR, while a paltry 19 lakh applications trickled in for reinstatement. This sharp imbalance raises several questions.
Our analysis of 1,500 polling booths revealed a damning pattern: voters who voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections plus those deleted in the SIR often added up to nearly 100 percent or more of the electorate at more than three-fourths of the centres. The figures for 179 booths exceeded 100 percent, for 441 hovered at 95-100 percent and for 541 at 90-95 percent. If we accept the ECI’s claim of diligent enumeration, three possible scenarios emerge: universal turnout in 2024 (impossible in reality), rampant bogus voting (a criminal outrage), or mass exodus in just one year (unlikely at most booths). Our on-field investigation as well as interviews with officials, residents and other stakeholders demolished these possibilities. Instead, we uncovered aggressive, haphazard deletions fuelled by sub-standard processes and an inept software that failed to weed out duplicates without collateral damage. Booth level officers seem to have marked 400-plus voters ‘Shifted’ in urban booths without evidence of duplicates or deaths. In other areas, deletions marked ‘Absent’ were rampant, including residents who still live there.
Worse, concurrent booth rationalisation—meant to cap voters at 1,200 per station by adding more booths—has sown utter confusion. Voters scrubbed from draft rolls now hunt fruitlessly for their names on deletion lists. Political parties’ booth level agents, ideally positioned to spot errors, are handcuffed by the reshuffle. The result? A deliberate veil over the deletions’ true scale, leaving the electorate in the dark.
With similar hasty revisions currently underway in other states under absurdly tight deadlines, the questions raised in Tamil Nadu resonate wider across the country. Absent elaborate analyses and local help, crores of deleted voters remain poised for shock on polling day. Those arbitrarily relocated face needless hurdles. Voters deserve accountability, not excuses. The ECI must immediately swing to action, overhaul its archaic systems and restore transparency. Without urgent redress, it risks eroding faith in India’s electoral soul.