The Congress on Sunday dubbed the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls a “Shah Instigated Removal” of voters, alleging that the exercise was leading to large-scale deletions and amounted to an “assault on the Constitution”.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh claimed that nearly one in three voters in the states and Union Territories covered by the third phase of SIR had either been deleted from the electoral rolls or faced the risk of deletion.
“The deletion rate works out to over 17 per cent. An additional 5.43 crore voters have been issued notices demanding additional documentation to have their names retained on the electoral roll. The risk of deletion rate works to another 15 per cent,” Ramesh said in a statement.
He said 6.18 crore voters out of 36.06 crore covered in 12 states and two UTs in the ongoing third phase had been deleted.
Ramesh said the first two phases of SIR had resulted in the deletion of 7.8 crore names, with the deletion rate standing at 13 per cent of the pre-SIR electoral rolls.
He said the third phase commenced in 16 states and three Union Territories in mid-2026.
“Thus, a staggering 32 per cent (or about one in three) of voters have had their names deleted or face risk of deletion,” Ramesh said.
According to the figures cited by him, the combined proportion of deleted voters and those facing the risk of deletion was 53.73 per cent in Delhi, 52.58 per cent in Chandigarh, 48.90 per cent in Telangana, 39.57 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.5 per cent in Haryana, 35.71 per cent in Uttarakhand, 35.36 per cent in Meghalaya, 33.88 per cent in Maharashtra, 27.6 per cent in Karnataka, 23.67 per cent in Odisha, 21.17 per cent in Andhra Pradesh and 15.23 per cent in Punjab.
Ramesh alleged that the deletions were disproportionately affecting economically and socially disadvantaged sections and claimed that, in most major states, more women than men had been removed from the rolls.
He also criticised the Election Commission for not making lists of voters facing possible deletion public in all states, saying Delhi published its list only on September 19 following public pressure.
“This is an unusually high proportion that reflects structural flaws in the entire SIR process,” Ramesh said.
He alleged that the SIR had shifted the burden of proving eligibility onto citizens by asking them to produce documents that the state may never have provided them.
“A test that the overwhelming majority of citizens cannot pass is just a ‘machine for exclusion’,” he said.
“SIR is actually a massive Shah Instigated Removal of voters. It is an assault on our Constitution,” Ramesh said, in an apparent reference to Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
(With inputs from PTI)
