‘Shah instigated removal’: Congress alleges large-scale voter deletions under SIR

New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday alleged that the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was resulting in large-scale deletions of voters and described the exercise as a “(Home Minister Amit) Shah-instigated removal” of voters, claiming that it amounted to an “assault on the Constitution”.

The Election Commission has launched the third phase of SIR across 16 states and three Union Territories, covering more than 36.73 crore electors, as part of its exercise to verify and update electoral rolls.

Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh claimed that nearly one in three voters in the states and Union Territories covered by the third phase had either been deleted from the electoral rolls or faced the possibility of deletion.

“The deletion rate works out to over 17 per cent. An additional 5.43 crore voters have been issued notices demanding additional documentation to have their names retained on the electoral roll. The risk of deletion rate works to another 15 per cent,” he said in a statement.

He claimed that 6.18 crore voters out of the 36.06 crore covered in 12 states and two Union Territories in the ongoing third phase had been deleted.

Ramesh further claimed that the first two phases of the SIR had resulted in the deletion of 7.8 crore names, with the deletion rate standing at 13 per cent of the electoral rolls before the revision exercise.

According to the Election Commission, Phase III of the SIR was ordered in 16 states and three Union Territories, with more than 3.94 lakh Booth Level Officers conducting house-to-house verification of over 36.73 crore electors.

Ramesh said the third phase commenced in 16 states and three Union Territories in mid-2026 and claimed that the scale of deletions and notices issued to voters had raised concerns over the electoral roll revision process.

“Thus, a staggering 32 per cent (or about one in three) of voters have had their names deleted or face risk of deletion,” Ramesh said.

According to the figures cited by the Congress leader, the combined proportion of voters who had either been deleted or were facing the risk of deletion stood at 53.73 per cent in Delhi, 52.58 per cent in Chandigarh, 48.90 per cent in Telangana, 39.57 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.5 per cent in Haryana, 35.71 per cent in Uttarakhand, 35.36 per cent in Meghalaya, and 33.88 per cent in Maharashtra.

The figures were 27.6 per cent in Karnataka, 23.67 per cent in Odisha, 21.17 per cent in Andhra Pradesh and 15.23 per cent in Punjab, according to him.

Ramesh alleged that the deletions were disproportionately affecting economically and socially disadvantaged sections of society. He also claimed that, in most major states, more women than men had been removed from the electoral rolls.

He criticised the Election Commission for not making lists of voters facing possible deletion public in all states and said Delhi published its list only on September 19 following public pressure.

“This is an unusually high proportion that reflects structural flaws in the entire SIR process,” Ramesh said.

The Congress leader further alleged that the SIR process had effectively shifted the responsibility of proving eligibility onto citizens by requiring them to produce additional documents, which he said the state may never have provided to them.

“A test that the overwhelming majority of citizens cannot pass is just a ‘machine for exclusion’,” he said.

Ramesh also questioned the documentation requirements under the exercise and alleged that the process could create difficulties for citizens seeking to retain their names on the electoral rolls.

“SIR is actually a massive Shah Instigated Removal of voters. It is an assault on our Constitution,” Ramesh said, in an apparent reference to Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The third phase of the SIR process covers Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana and Uttarakhand, along with Delhi, Chandigarh and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

IANS