By Dr. Gyan Pathak
In the third phase of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, National Capital Territory (NCT) Delhi tops in deletion of voters in terms of percentage about 33 per cent, and the State of Maharashtra that headquarters the financial capital of the country Mumbai tops in voters’ deletion in terms of absolute number about 2.07 crore. These deletions are likely to have significant impact on politics and economy to the country, which may be greater than the raw number of deleted names especially because Delhi and Maharashtra occupy unusually important positions in India’s political and economic system.
The draft electoral roll published on Monday, 31 August 2026, after the completion of SIR enumeration phase of 49 days, has deleted names of 47.56 lakh (32.78%) voters in Delhi, that is 1 in three voters is deleted. The total number of electors in the previous rolls was over 1.45 crore out of which has now shrunk to 97.53 lakh, or 67.22%. Most shocking is that Tughlakabad Vidhan Sabha constituency has highest number of deletion at 52.1 per cent, that is 1 in 2 voters is deleted.
In Maharashtra, the draft electoral roll published on the same date shows that 2.07 crore, that is 21.1 per cent names of voters were deleted. Number of voters in Maharashtra have fallen from 9.78 crore to 7.71 crore.
In both the states, voters are given time by the Election Commission of India to file claims and objections against their exclusion from the draft list between August 31 and September 30. Their appeals will be heard by October 29, and the final electoral roll will be published on November 4. The next election in both the state will be held after about four years from now.
Delhi is not simply another electoral jurisdiction. It is the national political centre, containing the Union government, Parliament, the Supreme Court and the headquarters of most national political institutions. It has 7 Lok Sabha seats and a 70-member Assembly, and its present Assembly term runs until February 2030. It is a Union Territory with an assembly, and the BJP led Centre by enacting laws have clipped the powers of the elected Chief Minister and made their nominated Lieutenant Governor having real power of the government, rather LG is government.
It gives the SIR deletion in Delhi a multi-layer significance. A reduction of nearly one-third of the draft electorate is enormous. Even if much of it is legitimate—people who have died, moved away, are duplicated, or cannot be located—the scale means that the distinction between “cleaning the rolls” and “excluding eligible citizens” becomes crucial. A voter who is wrongly omitted does not merely suffer an administrative inconvenience, but also the person loses the ability to participate unless the omission is corrected.
Demographic significance in Delhi is unusually high because the population in Delhi is comprised of people from all States and UTs of the country. Delhi has a highly mobile population, including migrant workers, tenants, students and people who maintain connections with another state. ECI has specifically pointed to relocation, duplicate registrations and non-collection of enumeration forms as important reasons for the exclusions. It creates a particularly important policy question: does an election-roll system designed around stable residence adequately capture the realities of an urban migrant population? A person can be genuinely eligible to vote in Delhi while simultaneously having family, property or documentation elsewhere.
National Capital status of Delhi gives the SIR a greater symbolic value than in any other state. What happens to its electoral roll becomes a test of public confidence in the Election Commission’s procedures. If eligible voters believe that they can disappear from the roll because a verification form was not collected, because they were temporarily absent, or because their documentation was inadequate, the consequence can be a much wider crisis of confidence than the numerical effect in Delhi alone.
Deletion in Maharashtra is important for a different reason. Maharashtra is arguably even more consequential in electoral arithmetic. It has 48 Lok Sabha seats, the largest number after Uttar Pradesh, and its Assembly has 288 seats. The present Assembly’s term runs until December 2029. The scale of the present draft-roll reduction of about 2.07 crore is extraordinary. The ECI itself cautions that this should not be treated as the final number of voters being deleted.
The significance becomes sharper because the largest concentrations of omitted voters include Pune, Thane and Mumbai Suburban, which together account for about 40.5% of the omitted names in Maharashtra. That matters because these are not marginal parts of the state. They contain some of India’s largest urban and peri-urban populations, with enormous migrant, rental and informal-sector populations.
Then there is a special case of the financial capital of India Mumbai. Maharashtra’s electoral and political importance is deeply intertwined with Mumbai’s economic importance. A serious problem with voter inclusion in Mumbai and its surrounding metropolitan region therefore raises questions not merely about an election but about the political representation of one of India’s most economically consequential populations.
The deletions in Delhi and Maharashtra raise a serious question – Can the system identify and remove ineligible entries without disproportionately losing eligible but mobile, poor, migrant, elderly or otherwise difficult-to-document citizens?
The scale of deletion in Delhi and Maharashtra deserved scrutiny because three reasons – A very large error can occur even without deliberate manipulation; the burden of proof has been shifted onto voters; and how many people can participate in election that can affect their destiny.
Who disappeared, from which constituencies, for what stated reason, how many successfully re-entered the rolls, and what was the net effect on the composition of the electorate? That is a much more meaningful democratic audit than the headline deletion number.
Deletions in Delhi and Maharashtra together make the issue nationally consequential. Delhi tests the integrity of electoral administration at India’s political nerve centre, while Maharashtra tests it in one of India’s largest and most economically and electorally important states, that sends second largest number of MPs (48) in the Lok Sabha.
Since there are unusually very large deletion in both Delhi and Maharashtra, it poses a national question – Is India merely becoming better at removing obsolete names from electoral rolls, or is the process also creating a new barrier for legitimately registered but highly mobile citizens?
That question cannot be answered responsibly from the deletion totals alone. The decisive evidence will be the constituency-wise pattern of deletions, reasons assigned, socioeconomic and demographic profile of omitted voters, number of successful claims, and comparison of the final roll with the pre-SIR roll.
The ECI’s credibility depends not only on having the legal authority to revise rolls—which the government says the Supreme Court has affirmed—but on demonstrating procedural neutrality, transparency and verifiability. (IPA Service)
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