EC publishes final voters list for Chhattisgarh; SC-ST and minorities’ names deleted intentionally, alleges Congress

Announcing the completion of Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Chhattisgarh, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday (February 21, 2026) said that nearly 2.35 lakh voters were added after the claims and objections phase.

The process started on October 27 last year and the draft rolls were published on December 23, 2025. In its statement on Saturday (February 21), the ECI said that there had been an increase of 2,34,994 voters in the final list over the draft rolls published earlier.

Breaking up the numbers, the ECI said that there were 21,230,737 voters in the pre-SIR list and enumeration forms of 18,495,920 of them were received, which were digitised. This meant that 27 lakh voters were excluded in the draft rolls over deaths, enrolment at multiple places, change in address, etc.

Following this, claims and objections for inclusion and removal of names in the rolls and amendment to entries were submitted between last December 23 and January 21 this year. Upon resolution of these on February 14, 2026, the total number in the final rolls went up to 18,730,914, a net addition of 2,34,994.

Congress alleges ECI-BJP collusion

Questioning these numbers, the Opposition Congress party has accused that the ECI colluded with the ruling BJP to delete “lakhs of names from the voters’ list” and added that the names of those from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and minorities were removed purposely from the rolls.

“The names of 25 lakh Chhattisgarh voters have been maliciously deleted. While deleting the names of those who died or moved away after marriage is fine, the Election Commission and the BJP have colluded to deliberately delete a large number of SC, ST, and minority community voters. Complaints of fraud have been filed at several polling booths across the State, but no action has been taken,” said State Congress president Deepak Baij, adding that the Election Commission’s intentions in this entire process were unclear.

He said the BJP, through its workers, conspired to identify Congress voters and obtain forged signatures on Form 7 for deletion. Complaints have been filed in numerous locations, and the Congress party has also filed complaints in several locations, but no FIR has been registered against anyone yet, he added.