Over 99 Lakh Names Dropped From Karnataka Voter List After Revision Drive

Karnataka has published its final electoral roll after completing a Special Intensive Revision drive, leaving the State with four crore fifty-five lakh voters. This total is down sharply from five crore fifty-four lakh voters before the revision began, with over ninety-nine lakh names knocked off the lists.

Roll Details And Categories

The final list includes over two crore twenty-five lakh male voters, two crore twenty-nine lakh female voters, and two thousand eight hundred forty-one third-gender voters. Young voters aged eighteen to nineteen total over six lakh eighty-three thousand, while voters aged above eighty-five cross three lakh ninety-two thousand. The draft stage had seen over one crore seven lakh names deleted, but the final roll added eight lakh sixty-four lakh names back. Those who applied after September twenty-third will appear in quarterly supplementary lists.

Reasons For Deletions

During the draft stage, sixteen lakh thirty-nine lakh names were dropped because the voters were dead, while over seven lakh were duplicate entries. The largest drop came from eighty lakh sixty-two thousand voters who shifted residence or were not found at their addresses. Another three lakh eighty-three thousand names were deleted under an 'Others' category, which the office of the Chief Electoral Officer has not clearly explained beyond stating it includes people who refused to sign. Only seven lakh eighty-seven thousand applications for inclusion were received to restore names.

Official Objections

Election officials themselves filed at least sixty-one thousand Form-seven applications seeking the deletion of names. Not a single one of these applications mentioned a reason for deletion, which is a mandatory requirement under the Registration of Electors Rules of nineteen sixty. Electoral Registration Officers and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers stated the system auto-generated the forms with their digital signatures when voters could not be reached during hearings, meaning the same machinery raised objections and decided on them.

Context

Electoral roll revisions are routine administrative exercises carried out by election authorities to clean up voter lists by removing dead, duplicate, or shifted voters. However, large-scale deletions often spark public concern and debate over whether genuine voters might lose their right to vote due to procedural hurdles or missing paperwork.