UP SIR draft electoral rolls out: 2.89 crore voter names deleted, highest in India

The Election Commission of India on Tuesday published the draft voter rolls for Uttar Pradesh following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.

The draft electoral roll published today has 12.55 crore voters in Uttar Pradesh, officials said. The SIR process started in Uttar Pradesh on 4 November.

In October 2025 Electoral roll had 15.44 crore voters in UP. After the SIR exercise names of 2.89 crore voters have been dropped.

Among the voters whose name have been removed include 46.23 lakh ( 2.99%) deceased, 2.17 crore (14.06%) who have shifted from their old residences and 25.46 lakh ( 1.65%) names whose details were found on multiple locations, officials said in Lucknow on Tuesday.

So, UP leads the list of deleted names so far.

Before UP, Tamil Nadu led the list with the names of about 97 lakh people deleted from the voter list. In Gujarat, 73.73 lakh, or 14.5%, of the 5.08 crore electors were deleted from the first draft list. West Bengal saw 58 lakh names removed from the draft list. In Rajasthan, 44 lakh voters were removed.

The UP draft roll was scheduled to be released on 31 December. But the Election Commission delayed it. The final list will be published on March 6.

The Election Commission announced the SIR of the electoral rolls on 24 June. All registered electors have to submit enumeration forms, and some categories of electors have to give additional documents to establish eligibility in order to remain on the rolls.

The SIR started in Bihar in June and resulted in the removal of 6 per cent, or approximately 47 lakh, voters from the state’s electoral rolls. Then, the poll panel started SIR in 12 states/UTs on 27 October.

The draft rolls for West Bengal, Rajasthan, Goa, Lakshadweep and Puducherry were published on 16 December, showing deletions of over 1 crore voters.

The revision of the schedule comes amid heightened scrutiny of the Special Intensive Revision(SIR) exercise in the state, where a large-scale pruning of voter list has been carried out. The nearly two-month SIR exercise, conducted with the theme 'Shuddh Nirvachak Namavali, Majboot Loktantra' (Clean Electoral Roll, Strong Democracy), began on November 4 and concluded on December 26 after two extensions.

What happens next?

Claims and objections will be invited from January 6 to February 6, the state's Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said in a statement earlier this month.

The disposal of claims and objections, and decisions on enumeration forms will continue from January 6 to February 27, after which the final electoral roll will be published on March 6, he said.