Nearly 8% of voters removed from final electoral lists across 9 States and U.T.s in SIR second phase

Nearly 8% of voters have been removed across nine States and Union Territories in the final electoral rolls published after the second phase of the special intensive revision (SIR).

While the final lists of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar, Chhattisgarh, and Goa were published on Saturday (February 21, 2026), that of Gujarat were released on February 17 and Puducherry and Lakshadweep on February 14.

The combined number of voters in the nine States and U.T.s stood at 21,45,62,215 as on October 27 when the second phase of the SIR was announced following the completion of the exercise in Bihar. After the revision, the voter strength for these entities came down to 19,75,33,701 with net deletions of 1,70,28,514 or 7.93 %.

Final lists of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu are yet to be published.

While Gujarat saw the most voter deletions among States with 13.40% of voters removed from the final list, Kerala marked the least number of deletions at 3.22%. Among Union Territories, Andaman and Nicobar saw the most deletions at 16.87% and Lakshadweep the least at 0.36%.

Voter deletions in Chhattisgarh stood at 11.77%, Goa at 10.76%, Puducherry at 7.5%, Madhya Pradesh at 5.96%, and Rajasthan at 5.74%.

The final list for Uttar Pradesh is scheduled to come out on April 10 after numerous extensions, and the list for Tamil Nadu is set to be published on February 23.

In West Bengal, where the SIR has witnessed intense litigation between the Election Commission and the State government, the Supreme Court has allowed the final list be published on February 28.

However, the top court also took an “extraordinary” decision to involve the judiciary in the ongoing exercise, saying the persistent “trust deficit” between the Mamata Banerjee government and the Election Commission (EC) has led to a “stalemate”, with time running out.

The court proposed shifting urgent cases pending with the deployed judicial officers to other courts for a period of a week or 10 days “by which the entire process [SIR] is required to be completed”.

The SIR was first conducted in Bihar last year ahead of its Assembly election and the voter list decreased from 7.89 crore in June 2024 to 7.43 crore in September 2024. In Assam, a special revision of voter rolls was conducted and total number of voters fell by 2.43 lakh.

The EC has asked the remaining 22 States and Union Territories to complete all preparatory work related to the SIR at the earliest with the revision “expected to start from April 2026”.