Nearly 30 lakh voters listed in Rajasthan's electoral rolls for local body elections do not figure in the Election Commission's final list published after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), according to a PTI report, raising questions over the use of different electoral rolls by the two poll authorities.
The discrepancy is between the Election Commission's final SIR roll and the electoral lists maintained by the Rajasthan State Election Commission (SEC) for urban local body and panchayat elections. The SEC has attributed the difference to its continued use of the pre-SIR electoral roll, saying preparations for local body elections had begun much earlier.
The Election Commission's final SIR roll, published in February 2026, reduced Rajasthan's electorate from 5.47 crore to 5.15 crore, following the deletion of 44.28 lakh names and the addition of 12.91 lakh voters.
In contrast, the SEC's electoral lists for the same 199 Assembly constituencies continued to carry around 5.45 crore names, leaving a gap of nearly 30 lakh voters between the two sets of rolls, PTI reported.
SEC Secretary Rajesh Verma said the commission had used the Election Commission's pre-SIR electoral roll, last updated on January 1, 2025, as the basis for local body elections. The SEC traditionally relies on electoral rolls updated through the Election Commission's annual Special Summary Revision, he said.
Chief Electoral Officer Naveen Mahajan also confirmed that the SEC had relied on the pre-SIR list. He said no objections had been raised in Rajasthan over the final SIR roll.
However, rights activist Nikhil Dey, founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, questioned the SEC's decision to retain the older list when the Election Commission had published its final revised roll. He argued that electoral rolls were continuously updated and sought an explanation for the SEC's decision to treat the earlier list as more accurate.
Dey also questioned how booth-level officers could mark voters as deceased in one electoral roll while their names continued to appear in another.
A comparative analysis by Dey found that 26.63 lakh voters deleted during the SIR exercise continued to figure in the SEC's 2026 electoral rolls for urban local body and panchayat election.
(With inputs from PTI)
