29.6 million marked for deletion from UP poll rolls, most from urban areas

Roughly 29.6 million names in Uttar Pradesh might get excised from the rolls after the special intensive revision, with the highest percentage of deletions likely to be seen in urban hubs such as Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerutand Agra, election commission said on Thursday.

- Rajesh Kumar Singh and Abhishek Jha

The first phase of the SIR in the state is set to end on December 26. If these numbers hold, then it'll represent about 19% of the 154 million electors in Uttar Pradesh as on October 27. This is more than double the proportion seen in West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Bihar, the other big states where SIR is underway or has already taken place.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath drew attention to the numbers earlier this week during a meeting of Bharatiya Janata Party workers.

“Uttar Pradesh’s population stands at around 25 crore, of which nearly 65% should be eligible voters, translating to about 16 crore voters... However, during the SIR exercise, only around 12 crore names had been recorded so far... These are not your opponent's voters, 85 to 90% of these missing voters are ours,” he had said on December 14.

Ofthe 29.6 million, 12.8 million are categorised as permanently shifted, 4.6 million as deceased, 2.41 million as duplicate, and 8.74 million as untraceable, according to data. Another 984,393 voters (0.62%) have not returned enumeration forms after collecting them from booth-level officers.

The highest percentage of likely deletions are in Ghaziabad (36.67%), Lucknow (30.88%), Kanpur Nagar (25.62%), Prayagraj

(25:31%), Meerut (25.21%) and Agra (23.57%). The top eight districts with the highest number of potential deletions are all urban.