Karnataka's draft SIR rolls released, over 27% voters face cut

The state had 44.6 million electors, with significant deletions in urban areas, especially Bengaluru, which faced a 42.5% drop.

Updated on: Aug 25, 2026, 07:00:17 IST

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A total of 10.8 million names, or 19.5% of the total electors, have been omitted in the draft electoral roll for Karnataka after the completion of the enumeration phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), marking the second highest deletion among the big states after 21.6% removal in Telangana at the draft stage.

On Monday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) published Karnataka’s draft electoral roll, which has 44.6 million electors, 10.8 million (19.5%) less than the 55.4 million names on the rolls before the SIR exercise began on June 20 this year.

The SIR is a two-stage process. In the first stage, ECI distributes enumeration forms to electors and all those who return the filled forms are included in the draft roll. During the claims and objections phase that follows, people can ask to be included or deleted from the rolls. The second stage also involves verification of those electors who are not mapped to the 2002 electoral rolls or those with discrepancies in the enumeration forms they have submitted.

Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru, Karnataka chief electoral officer (CEO) V Anbukkumar said the state had 55,432,314 electors in the pre-SIR electoral rolls as on June 16, 2026, and a total of 44,635,975 electors have submitted their enumeration forms and are included in the draft roll. Of those included, 22,159,240 are male, 22,473,864 female and 2,871 electors under the ‘other’ category, he added.

Following the completion of the enumeration phase (June 30 to August 17), the CEO said, 10,796,339 electors (or 19.48%) have been dropped from the list after booth level officers (BLOs) marked them as Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate, and Others (ASDDO).

In the draft roll published on Monday, 2.3 million people are not mapped to the 2002 electoral roll and another 2 million have discrepancies, making around 4.4 million people included in the draft roll vulnerable to deletion in the final stage.

If all these 4.4 million people stand removed in the final roll, the total deletion in Karnataka from pre-SIR roll to final roll would stand at 15.2 million or 27.4%. To be sure, the final roll was smaller than the draft roll in only two states where SIR is now complete: Goa and West Bengal.

Anbukkumar said notices will be issued to 4,381,335 (9.82%) electors, whose forms had anomalies. The second stage — claims and objections phase — started on Monday and will conclude on September 23.

District-wise breakup of deletions in Karnataka show that they broadly follow the pattern seen in most states: deletions are generally higher in districts with higher urban population, although the relation is not always straightforward.

Bengaluru records highest deletion at 42.5%

Bengaluru (with all its constituent districts combined, it had an urban population share of 85% in the 2011 census, the highest in the state) has seen its elector count shrink by 42.5%, the highest for any district. The second highest deletion is in Gulbarga, where the roll has shrunk by 22%. Gulbarga was ranked only eighth by urban population share in the 2011 census. The third highest deletion is in Mysuru, which had the fourth highest urban population share in the 2011 census, where the roll has shrunk by 19.9%.

The lowest deletions are in Udupi, Haveri, and Uttara Kannada, where only 6%, 8.6%, and 8.7% electors, respectively, have been removed from the rolls. They were in the middle of the pack in urban population share in the 2011 census.

The districts with the highest deletions in absolute terms are the same as those with the highest percentage deletions, with a slight change in order. The highest deletions are in Bengaluru (all districts combined), where 4.8 million people are now off the rolls. Mysuru has seen 557,421 names removed from the rolls and Gulbarga has seen 521,957 names removed. The lowest deletions in absolute terms are in Kogagu, Udupi, and Chamarajnagar; where only 62,854, 63,331, and 88,275 names have been excised from the rolls.

The final electoral roll will be published on October 27.

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