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The ruling Congress in Karnataka has alleged that more than 84 lakh voters could be removed from the state’s electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision exercise “without thorough verification”, The Indian Express reported.
The party warned that genuine electors could be disenfranchised in the process.
However, the state’s Chief Electoral Officer V Anbukkumar, has rejected suggestions of mass deletions, saying voters listed under the “Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others” category will not be removed automatically and that the verification process is continuing, The New Indian Express reported.
In a petition submitted to the chief electoral officer, the Congress said data from the election authorities showed that 84.31 lakh of the 5.54 crore voters mapped before the exercise had been classified for deletion on grounds including being absent, shifted, dead, duplicate or under other categories during door-to-door verification by booth-level officers, The Indian Express reported.
The figure represents about 15% of the electorate before the revision process began.
The party has called for a second round of physical verification before any names are removed from the rolls.
“Ensure that no elector is deleted merely on the basis of a single house visit or incomplete verification,” the newspaper quoted the petition as saying. “Provide adequate notice and reasonable opportunity to every affected elector before any deletion is finalised.”
According to the election office’s data, the category includes 51.74 lakh voters listed as permanently shifted, 14.99 lakh listed as dead, 11.61 lakh listed as absent, 5.62 lakh identified as duplicate entries and about 33,000 classified under other reasons.
The four electoral districts in the Greater Bengaluru Area account for nearly half of all these cases in the state.
Responding to the concerns, Anbukkumar said the names of the 84 lakh electors in the category would not be deleted automatically, The New Indian Express reported.
He added that booth-level officers and electoral registration officers could amend records even after forms had been digitised.
The Election Commission extended the deadline for the house-to-house verification exercise from July 29 to August 8.
As of Wednesday, 4.26 crore forms had been digitised, while 43.24 lakh remained pending digitisation, the state’s electoral authority said.
The draft electoral roll is due to be published on August 17, followed by the claims and objections process, with the final roll scheduled for publication on October 19.
In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.
Since it began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.
In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision, but said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.
Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.
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