Maharashtra SIR excludes 2.06 crore electors from draft roll, 1.22 crore under scrutiny

Maharashtrarsquos Special Intensive Revision SIR of electoral rolls has left 20688487 names out of the draft electoral roll with four Assembly constituencies mdash Nalasopara Kalyan Rural Khadakwasla and Chinchwad mdash recording declines of between 406 per cent and 504 per cent from their preSIR voter baseThe state had 97854049 electors before the revision The draft roll contains 77165562 meaning 2114 per cent of the previous electorate has not been included at this stageThe workload on BLOsShinde also pointed to the workload on Booth Level Officers BLOs many of whom have regular government or teaching responsibilities alongside election duties He said extensive physical verification across a large electorate could increase the possibility of errors where verification is incomplete or mapping systems have limitations He said political parties also had a role in boothlevel organisation voterlist verification and voter awarenessldquoThe process should not be judged simply by how many names have been removed but by how accurately the system has distinguished between ineligible and eligible votersrdquo Shinde said He stressed the need for voter education transparent verification and an accessible mechanism to restore eligible voters to the rolls ldquoA clean electoral roll is essential but electoralroll purification must also ensure that every eligible citizen retains the right to voterdquoField verification raises questionsAmol Shinde a Punebased political researcherAmol Shinde a Punebased political researcher and owner of Stratsphere Dynamics said the SIR was undertaken with the stated aim of cleaning and strengthening electoral rolls but the scale of the exclusions and challenges at the field level warranted scrutiny Shinde said he had conducted SIRrelated workshops across 12 Assembly constituencies in Maharashtra and observed confusion among voters and political representatives about the processHe said there had been instances where living voters were reportedly classified as deceased and genuine residents were shown as permanently shifted He stressed that such individual cases did not by themselves establish systemic failure but said they highlighted the need for stronger verificationKhadakwasla throws up a data questionKhadakwasla had 576505 electors before SIR of whom 277851 were not included in the draft That leaves 298654 voters in the current figure cited in the analysis However the constituency recorded 326667 votes polled in the 2024 Assembly election That means the 2024 votes polled figure is 28013 higher than the current voter count cited after SIRWhy names were not includedCategory VotersPermanently shifted 7676135Absentuntraceable 7541229Deceased 3482231Duplicatealready 1766502enrolled elsewhereOthers 222390Total 20688487The official Maharashtra SIR material describes these as electors whose enumeration forms were not collectedAnother 122 crore under scrutinyThe SIR exercise has also flagged 12224007 voters who are currently in the draft roll for further scrutiny because of mappingrelated issues6248281Anomaly found5975726UnmappedIf 206 cr electors not included in the draft and the 122 cr under scrutiny are considered together 32912494 electors fall into these two categories The analysis classifies another 64941555 voters as secured