Manipur and Sikkim final rolls drop 1.85 lakh names after the SIR

The Election Commission published final photo electoral rolls for Manipur and Sikkim on 6 September after the Special Intensive Revision. Combined, about 1.85 lakh names came off the two lists: 1,32,456 in Manipur and 52,614 in Sikkim on The Hindu’s reading of the two chief electoral officers’ figures. Manipur now has 19,60,620 electors. Sikkim has 4,18,467.

Before the exercise Manipur had 20,93,076 voters on the roll as of 18 May. Sikkim had 4,71,081. The cuts are 6.3 percent in Manipur and 11.2 percent in Sikkim if those starting figures are the baseline. State Chief Electoral Officer Arun Kumar Sinha put Manipur’s reduction at 6.33 percent and said women now outnumber men on the final list: 10.06 lakh women, 9,53,350 men and 308 third-gender electors across 60 Assembly constituencies. A Tribune report from Imphal said 1.89 lakh names were deleted in Manipur and 56,871 added during the later claims window, leaving the same 19.60 lakh total.

What happened between draft and final

Manipur’s draft roll, published on 5 July, had 19,34,399 electors. Of those, 18,43,221 were mapped to themselves or to a parent on an earlier roll. 91,178 were unmapped. Authorities issued notices to the unmapped group and to 11,30,655 electors flagged for “logical discrepancies”: mismatched parent names, a thin age gap between parent and child, or a parent listed with more than six children. From 5 July to 4 August the office received 96,985 claims and objections and processed all of them. Sinha said the final list added 56,871 names and deleted 30,650 from the draft. A separate 1,58,677 electors whose enumeration forms never came back had already been left off the draft.

Sikkim’s draft in July listed 4,33,294 electors. 3,61,159, or 83.35 percent, were mapped to their own or a parent’s earlier details. The final roll of 4,18,467 is 14,827 names, or 3.42 percent, below that draft. The larger “excluded” figure of 54,209 used by local outlets includes people removed in earlier SIR stages. Of those, 37,724 sat in the Absentee, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate basket: 14,603 permanently shifted, 10,837 dead, 8,648 absent or untraceable, 2,396 duplicates, and 1,253 in other bins. The Commission’s system had also flagged 52,384 mapped Sikkim electors for logical discrepancies. Notices went to 1,24,519 people in the unmapped and discrepant groups.

The displacement argument in Manipur

Kuki-Zo organisations said before and during the revision that people displaced after the ethnic violence that began on 3 May 2023 could be struck off if they were not present to fill forms. The state government said that fear was misplaced. The final numbers do not, on their face, prove or disprove a community-wise purge. They do show a 6.3 percent cut in a state where hundreds of thousands were moved by the conflict and where many camps still stand. Any Booth Level Officer who could not find a family in its old village had a form that never came back. Those forms are how 1,58,677 names missed the draft.

Sikkim’s story is different. There was no comparable conflict. The exclusions there are described as deaths, shifts, absentees and duplicates, plus a heavy notice load on logical discrepancies. An 11.2 percent drop from the pre-SIR roll is still large for a state of just over four lakh electors. The draft-to-final drop of 3.42 percent is the cleaner measure of what the last two months changed.

Both lists are now the rolls that will be used for the next elections in those states unless a court or a further revision intervenes. The claims window is closed. The argument that remains is whether a displaced household in Kangpokpi or Churachandpur that did not get a form back can still get a name restored, and how many of Sikkim’s 10,837 “dead” entries were actually deaths.