Draft SIR rolls cut 6.15 crore names as 17 states shrink 15.7 percent since 2024

Draft electoral rolls published after the third phase of the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision show 6.15 crore names gone from the lists of 17 states and Union Territories. The combined electorate in those places stood at 35,50,50,008 during the 2024 Lok Sabha election. It had risen to 36,08,07,394 by the freeze before SIR enumeration, after 57.75 lakh additions. The draft rolls now stand at 29,93,00,115. That is a 15.7 percent drop from the 2024 figure.

Maharashtra accounts for the largest cut in raw numbers. The state's draft list is down 1,58,96,198 electors, or 17.08 percent, from the Lok Sabha roll. Compared with the pre-SIR roll of 9.78 crore, the draft figure of 7.71 crore is a still steeper fall. Delhi and Chandigarh show the sharpest percentage drops, at 35.89 percent and 31.84 percent. In Delhi, enumeration forms came back from 97.53 lakh of 1.45 crore electors on the previous roll, or 67.22 percent. The rest did not make the draft.

Of the 6.15 crore deletions in this phase, about 1.11 crore are marked dead. The rest sit under absent, multiply enrolled, or an others heading. That remainder is the political argument. Absence on the day a booth-level officer called is not the same as being ineligible. The Commission says SIR rebuilds the roll rather than patching the old one, so a name on the previous list does not travel automatically.

Final rolls start appearing on 6 September in Mizoram, Sikkim and Manipur. Claims, objections and fresh registrations can still raise the totals. Nagaland's draft is due on 20 September and Tripura's on 21 October. Phase three covers Delhi, Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Chandigarh, Telangana, Punjab, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Nagaland, Tripura, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

Earlier phases had already removed large blocks of names. A June tally after one year of SIR put cumulative deletions across the country near six crore, including 66.88 lakh electors marked deceased, with Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal leading that column. Phase two, across 12 states and Union Territories, had cut lists by about 10.2 percent.

The Opposition has treated the scale of deletion as a voting-rights fight. The Commission has treated it as a clean-up after years of additions between revisions. Both readings can be true in the same district. A dead elector should not stay on the roll. A living renter who missed the enumerator can still lose the chance to vote if the claims window is short or poorly advertised.

September 6 therefore has two clocks. One is the publication of the first final lists. The other is the remaining window in states whose drafts are already out. Parties that can run booth-level claims at volume will recover some of the 6.15 crore. Parties that cannot will campaign on a thinner roll than the one they fought in 2024.

Readers should keep the two baselines separate. Against the Lok Sabha roll the drop is 15.7 percent. Against the pre-SIR freeze it is 17 percent. The extra 57.75 lakh names added after 2024 and then removed are part of the same exercise. They are also the easiest to miss in a headline.