Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 6: The Election Commission of India on Tuesday released the draft voter list for Uttar Pradesh after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls showing deletion of 2.89 crore voters in the state, including 46 lakh voters who are dead.
The development comes after the enumeration process was extended three times amid concerns over large-scale deletions in the country’s most populous state. Of the 2.89 crore people whose names have been removed, 2.17 crore have moved, 46.23 lakh are dead, and 25.47 lakh are registered in more than one place, the UP Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said.
The draft voter list is now shortened by 18.7 per cent or around one in every five voters. “A total of 12,55,56,025 electors, out of 15,44,30,092 electors as per the Electoral Roll on 27.10.2025, have submitted their Enumeration Forms till the last date of enumeration period i.e., 26.12.2025 reflecting an overwhelming participation in the first phase of SIR,” the statement of the ECI said.
The CEO also said 12.55 crore names were retained in draft rolls. The window for claims and objection was opened from Tuesday and will remain till February 6, 2026. The final list will be published on March 6. While the exercise was originally scheduled to end on December 11, 2025, the State sought an additional 15 days after noticing that the names of a large number of voters, were getting excluded from the draft list.
Further delays occurred due to administrative challenges, including an uneven workload for BLOs, some of whom were handling more than 1,200 voters per area. Additionally, 1,530 new polling stations were approved on December 23, requiring server-side data shifting. Following another extension, the draft voter list was published on Tuesday.
As per official figures, Uttar Pradesh had around 15.44 crore registered voters at the time the SIR was announced on October 27, 2025. Individual enumeration forms were printed for every voter, with Booth Level Officers (BLOs) tasked with door-to-door verification and collection of signed forms. Out of the total electorate, 12,55,56,025 enumeration forms were returned, accounting for 81.03 per cent of voters. However, forms from about 18.7 per cent of voters were not received, leading to the exclusion of 2.89 crore names from the draft rolls.
According to the data shared by the Election Commission, UP’s capital Lucknow has lost the maximum number of voters. When the SIR was announced, Lucknow had 39.9 lakh electors, which has now come down to 27.9 lakh – a reduction of 30 per cent. In Lalitpur, 9.5 lakh electors were registered as of September 27, 2025, which has reduced to 8.6 lakh – down by 10%.
The scale of deletions has triggered sharp political reactions. Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav had earlier alleged that the SIR process has disproportionately affected certain voter groups.
The poll body recently concluded the SIR in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, where the electoral roll was shortened by 97 lakh and 74 lakh voters, respectively. The ECI also released the draft roll after special enumeration in Assam, where the list was shortened by 10.56 lakh names.
Senior Congress leader Gurdeep Singh Sappal on Tuesday alleged that his name and those of his family members were removed from the UP’s draft electoral roll.
Sappal, a member of the Congress Working Committee, flagged an alleged flaw in the roll revision exercise, claiming there was no provision to retain the names of voters who have shifted their residence.
“Our names were included in the 2003 voter list. Our names were also included in the voter list of the previous election. The names of our parents were included in the 2003 voter list as well,” he said in a post in Hindi on X. The Congress leader said he and his family had submitted the necessary documents to the Election Commission
“We have passport, birth certificate, Aadhaar, bank account, property papers, 10th certificate — everything. I myself was Joint Secretary in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat along with the Vice President of India. Additionally, I am a member of the Congress’s supreme committee, CWC. Not only that, I have been part of the Congress delegation in the Election Commission multiple times on SIR and other issues. And the BLOs know all this too,” he added.
Sappal alleged that, despite all this, the names have been removed from the draft list, and the reason given was the relocation of the house from Sahibabad to Noida. “We were told that there is no provision to retain the names of voters who have shifted in SIR! Meaning, if any voter has changed their house to a new area, their name has been removed,” the post said.
Sappal flagged “crores of genuine voters” like him and said while he might fill a new Form 6 and get his family’s names added back, how many people will be able to do that? “This is the truth of SIR,” Sappal concluded the post by saying. The Election Commission has not responded to Gurdeep Singh Sappal’s claims.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Tuesday resumed hearings on the petitions that challenge the ECI’s decision to conduct the SIR exercise of electoral rolls in several States, including Bihar. Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the ECI, argued that the Commission has constitutional authority to revise electoral rolls, countering claims from petitioners that only the Central Government holds this power.
Mr Dwivedi raised issues regarding the ‘disguised’ citizenship drive and the indicative documents. Highlighting the constitutional framework governing electoral processes, Mr Dwivedi argued that Article 324 and 327 of the Constitution separately gives the Election Commission ‘control of the preparation of the electoral rolls.’
Mr Dwivedi said it did not matter how many foreigners are on the electoral roll. “Citizenship is at the core of the electoral exercise. The EC has the power to check,” he argued. “It is just rhetoric on the part of the petitioners to compare SIR with NRC,” Mr Dwivedi noted. The Court may take up the case again on January 7, 2025.
