SIR: Glaring oddities in Maharashtra’s deletion patterns
An analysis of Maharashtra's electoral rolls reveals that over 20% of voters were deleted during a recent revision process, raising concerns about arbitrary removal. The Election Commission has faced criticism for failing to release required population ratio data.
Why it matters
Large-scale, unexplained voter deletions threaten the integrity of democratic processes and suggest potential administrative bias in urban constituencies.
Analyses of constituency-wise deletions and lists of deletions in Maharashtra after the enumeration phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls have revealed several oddities, indicating high chances of aggressive and arbitrary deletions. The draft SIR roll released on August 31, showed that a total of 2.07 crore electors have been dropped from the 288 Assembly Constituencies (ACs) of Maharashtra, which is 21.14% of the 9.79 crore electors whose names were there on the pre-SIR rolls.
To place Maharashtra’s deletions in context, the 2.07 crore names dropped is higher than Chhattisgarh’s entire electorate. More surprisingly, it is higher than even the 2.04 crore deletions in Uttar Pradesh, during the SIR; U.P. is India’s largest State with 13.4 crore electors — which is bigger than the number of electors in the draft rolls of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi combined.
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