New Delhi, Jan 08, 2026 – The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise by the Election Commission of India (ECI) has sparked controversy from the outset. Accusations have ranged from procedural overreach and administrative lapses to claims of political conspiracies aimed at disenfranchising voters. Several of these claims are still pending judicial scrutiny.

Yet, as the draft electoral rolls for Uttar Pradesh were released following the enumeration phase on January 6, a surprising pattern emerged: the sheer scale of deletions has not triggered widespread protests, creating an asymmetry that has puzzled political observers.

Among India’s ten large states that underwent SIR, Uttar Pradesh leads in terms of deletions relative to its pre-SIR electoral roll, with 18.7% of voters removed—a total of 28.9 million people. For context, this is nearly the total number of people who voted in the 2024 UK elections. Across 13 states and Union territories, deletions during the SIR enumeration phase have summed to 72.2 million, comparable to the 74.7 million voters in Bihar in the 2025 elections.

If such large numbers of voters were being wrongfully removed, one might expect public outrage. Yet, this has not materialized. HT analysis of available district-level data suggests a plausible explanation: most deletions may be linked to double counting due to migration rather than wrongful exclusion.

Urban Districts See Higher Deletions

In Uttar Pradesh, districts like Lucknow and Ghaziabad experienced deletion rates of 30% and 28%, respectively—meaning nearly a third of registered voters were removed. A comparison of district-wise growth in voters since the post-delimitation elections in 2008 shows that districts contributing most to electoral growth also saw the highest share of deletions. This pattern holds strongly in states such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, and moderately in West Bengal.

The underlying dynamic appears tied to migration. Migrants often move from smaller or rural districts to urban centers for work. Many acquire voter registration cards in their new districts, sometimes retaining their voter registration in their place of origin as well. The SIR process likely purged duplicates, removing migrants from urban rolls while retaining their registration in their birth districts.

This theory helps explain the muted response to large-scale deletions: the affected voters were primarily mobile individuals already registered elsewhere, rather than people being entirely disenfranchised.

Broader Implications

While the immediate controversy around SIR deletions may be overblown, the exercise raises a deeper philosophical question about Indian democracy: Should citizens vote in their birthplace or in the district where they currently live and work, especially for short-term migrants? The answer affects political accountability, representation, and the structure of electoral participation, highlighting the complex interplay between migration and democratic processes in India.

In short, the SIR deletions likely reflect administrative cleanup of duplicate entries rather than targeted disenfranchisement, though the debate on the rights of internal migrants continues.