After tasting blood by forcing the resignation of the Union Education Minister through sustained street and online pressure, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the leftist activist group that emerged from satirical social media, is now targeting the Election Commission of India (ECI). They have hit the streets now demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the recently concluded Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and other alleged irregularities in India’s election process.
CJP has effectively amplified and even overtaken the agenda already being pursued by the Congress and Rahul Gandhi against the ECI. What began as an administrative exercise to update decades-old electoral rolls has been framed by critics as a massive disenfranchisement drive. The claims deserve careful examination against the actual process, the numbers, and India’s demographic realities.
The Cockroach Janta Party, Congress leaders including Rahul Gandhi, and the left-liberal circles in the country have centred their attack on the claim that roughly 13 crore names were “deleted” during the SIR. They describe this as “vote chori” (vote theft), a “Shah Instigated Removal,” or an assault on the Constitution. Their demands include the immediate resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, a halt to further exclusions, restoration of the January 2025 rolls, an independent judicial inquiry, and repeal of the 2023 law governing the appointment of Election Commissioners.
Local cases have been highlighted to support the broader narrative. Rahul Gandhi visited the Bela Estate settlement in Delhi and alleged that of roughly 728 residents who had lived there for decades and voted in recent elections, only one name remained after SIR. Residents disputed the “permanently shifted” marking, arguing they had only moved a short distance after demolitions.
Critics also argue that the SIR process places an unfair documentation burden on ordinary citizens, especially migrants, women, and the poor, and that many eligible voters have been wrongly excluded without adequate notice or hearing.
However, these allegations treat the draft-stage ASDD classifications as final, permanent deletions of genuine voters. The ECI’s position, and the mechanics of the process, present a different picture.
The figure of approximately 13.39 crore refers to electors placed in the ASDD (Absent/Not Traceable, Permanently Shifted, Dead, Duplicate) categories during the preparation of the draft electoral rolls across the phases of SIR. According to ECI clarifications and data reported from the process, the broad breakdown is:
The ECI has clarified that this does not mean that 13.39 crore voters have been finally deleted from voter lists, it only means that these voters have been placed in the ASDD categories. These are not automatic final deletions from the electoral rolls of the country.
Names missing from a draft roll can still be restored through the claims and objections process. Eligible electors can file Form 6 (with supporting documents) for inclusion. The ECI has also ordered special drives in states where SIR has concluded, directing Booth Level Officers to identify left-out persons and assist with Form 6 enrolment. The distinction between a draft-stage classification and a final deletion after due process is central to understanding the numbers.
The roughly 2.80 crore entries marked dead reflect the natural demographic reality that electoral rolls, if not intensively verified for long periods, accumulate the names of deceased persons. Removing confirmed dead electors is a routine and necessary part of any roll revision. Leaving the names of deceased persons create the possibility of illegal voting in their names.
India records roughly 9 to 10 million deaths a year, with a death rate of around 6.5–7.5 per thousand population. Over a decade, this implies 9–10 crore deaths. Not every death of an enrolled elector is removed from the voter list on time. The death registration itself is incomplete in many areas. The scale is large enough that electoral rolls, if not regularly cleaned, accumulate the names of deceased persons in substantial numbers.
The normal procedure for removing these names has long been largely manual and form-driven. Under the Representation of the People Act and the Registration of Electors Rules, the usual route is Form 7 for deletion of the name, filed by a family member, a local elector or party worker, or the Booth Level Officer, preferably with a death certificate. The form is displayed for a notice period, the BLO verifies the fact on the ground, and the Electoral Registration Officer passes an order after verifying the death. Suo-moto deletion is also permitted when a death certificate or a list from the Registrar of Births and Deaths clearly establishes the identity, but even then, field verification is expected.
In practice, many families do not promptly file Form 7, BLOs discover deaths only during periodic visits, and there is often a lag of months or years before a name is removed. As a result, the names of deceased electors remain on the rolls in large numbers until an intensive verification is undertaken.
To address the late removal of deceased voters from the electoral roll, the ECI has proposed an automatic removal process. In May 2025 the Election Commission stated that it would obtain death registration data electronically from the Registrar General of India, in line with the Registration of Electors Rules and the 2023 amendments to the Registration of Births and Deaths Act. The purpose is to give Electoral Registration Officers timely information about registered deaths so that Booth Level Officers can re-verify the information through field visits without waiting for a Form 7 application. The Commission has indicated that it has started connecting its systems with the RGI database. However, official statements make clear that the electronic data serves as an additional source of information; deletions still require verification, and in practice Form 7 or equivalent confirmation is used before a name is finally removed. There is no fully automated, real-time deletion of names solely on the basis of electronic death data without field verification.
A person is entitled to be enrolled in only one constituency; Sections 17 and 18 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, make this explicit. In practice, however, duplicate or multiple entries arise frequently. A person may register at a new address through Form 6 while the old entry remains on the roll of the previous constituency. Shifting within or across constituencies, incomplete processing of forms, or simple administrative lag can produce the same result. Because electoral rolls are maintained constituency by constituency and there is no seamless national system that automatically extinguishes an old entry when a new one is created, the two or more entries can coexist for a long time. In fact, Rahul Gandhi himself has pointed this out many times, while targeting the Modi govt and the ECI.
The ordinary process for changing constituency is manual and requires action on both ends. Inclusion at the new place is done through Form 6 (or Form 8 for correction/shifting within same constituency), and removal of the old entry requires Form 7, normally filed by the elector, a family member, a local elector, or the Booth Level Officer of the old constituency, citing the ground of “already enrolled” elsewhere. Until that Form 7 is filed and processed, the old name continues to appear on the roll of the previous constituency, while the name appears in the new constituency based on the Form 6. Many electors, once enrolled at the new place, do not follow up to get the old entry deleted; BLOs discover duplicates only during periodic checks or when cross-verification is specifically undertaken. The result is a steady accumulation of multiple entries.
The size of the Duplicate category is therefore a direct consequence of the decentralised, form-driven architecture of the electoral roll system. Because removal from the old constituency is not automatic upon new enrolment and depends on a separate Form 7 process that is often not completed in time, names linger. The SIR’s house-to-house verification and matching exercise identified and cleared roughly one crore such redundant entries from the draft rolls, restoring the principle of one person, one enrolment. It did not invent a new category of exclusion; it simply applied the existing legal prohibition on multiple registration after a long period in which the manual dual-form process had allowed duplicates to accumulate.
The Permanently Shifted category accounts for the largest share of the draft-stage ASDD classifications, approximately 6.30 crore electors across the phases of the Special Intensive Revision. It refers to electors who were previously registered at a particular address but, on the basis of field verification, are no longer ordinarily resident there because they have moved permanently. Under the Representation of the People Act, a person must be an ordinary resident of the constituency in which he or she is enrolled. When that condition ceases to be fulfilled because of permanent shifting, the name is excluded from the draft roll of the old constituency.
In the Permanently Shifted category, the BLO, after repeated visits and inquiry from neighbours, local residents or landlords, forms a positive finding that the elector has permanently migrated or shifted from the registered address. The enumeration form is not returned because the person is no longer living there, and local information confirms the move. The name is therefore listed as Permanently Shifted and does not appear in the draft roll of that constituency. This marking is made even though the elector (or family) has not submitted Form 7 seeking deletion of the old entry. The BLO’s confirmation of permanent shifting, based on field inquiry, is the operative ground.
Official guidance states that if the person has moved and the enumeration form could not be collected at the old address, the name will not appear in the draft roll for the reason “Permanently Shifted,” and the person may then file Form 6 at the new location. Form 8 can be used in case of shifting within the same constituency but to a different polling centre.
The category therefore is based on a positive field finding of permanent shifting, and leads to exclusion only from the old constituency’s draft roll. It does not equate to national deletion of a voter, nor does it prevent re-enrolment at the new place of ordinary residence. Eligible electors retain the right to file claims.
A substantial number of those marked permanently shifted will already have enrolled, or will enrol, at their new place of residence. Others may not have done so promptly. The net effect on the national electorate is therefore not a simple subtraction of 6.30 crore genuine voters. Many of these are people whose electoral registration has, or should have, moved with them. The low relative volume of Form 6 applications compared with the shifted numbers in some reports indicates that a portion remain unenrolled for a time, but that is a consequence of individual action, or inaction, and the absence of automatic transfer, not evidence that the original marking was wrongful.
The large size of the category is consistent with India’s high levels of internal migration and with the long interval since the last intensive verification, during which many people moved without completing the dual process of new enrolment and old deletion. The SIR applied the existing legal requirement of ordinary residence through systematic house-to-house inquiry; the Permanently Shifted marking records the outcome of that inquiry.
By contrast, the Absent/Untraceable category covers cases where the BLO can’t find a voter and is unable to establish that the person has permanently shifted to a different place. The elector cannot be contacted despite visits, the form is not returned, and local inquiry does not yield clear information of a permanent move. The person may be temporarily away, the address may be difficult to locate, or the household may simply be unavailable at the time of enumeration. The name is excluded from the draft roll for non-return of the form, but the classification is “absent” or “untraceable” rather than “permanently shifted,” because a shift is not confirmed.
When an elector cannot be located at all and does not return the form or file a claim, the roll of that constituency cannot retain the name indefinitely. ECI guidelines and state CEO FAQs instruct BLOs, when forms are not returned, to identify the probable cause, Absent, Shifted, Death or Duplicate, on the basis of inquiry from nearby electors and to record it accordingly. Therefore, around 1 crore voters were found absent at their places, didn’t return the enumeration forms, resulting in deletion of their names.
The residual “Others” (or “Other”) category accounts for approximately 0.26 crore electors out of the overall 13.39 crore draft-stage classifications under the Special Intensive Revision. It is used when an enumeration form could not be collected and the case does not fit neatly into the four principal categories of Absent/Untraceable, Permanently Shifted, Dead, or Duplicate.
Chief Electoral Officers have explained that the category consists “mostly” of electors who refused to sign the enumeration form. Reasons cited include the person stating that they had already completed the process in another constituency or state and did not wish to sign again for fear of creating a duplicate entry, personal reluctance to participate in the documentation exercise, or, in a smaller number of cases, claims of having acquired citizenship of another country and no longer wanting to remain on the Indian roll. Maharashtra officials described it explicitly as a fifth category of people who may have refused to sign the form for various reasons. In Karnataka, more than 3.83 lakh voters were placed in this category, with the CEO confirming that it primarily captured those refusing to sign.
The category also serves as a bucket for cases that remained unclear after field inquiry by Booth Level Officers and could not be confidently classified under the main heads. Delhi CEO clarifications list the reasons for uncollectable forms as death, untraceable/absent, permanently shifted, already enrolled and others. In some states, guidelines permitted the Electoral Registration Officer or Assistant Electoral Registration Officer greater flexibility with “Others” cases—allowing them to mark an elector as Found OK or Found Not Eligible directly, or to schedule a hearing—because the ground was less clear-cut than confirmed death or permanent shifting. Some reports also note that BLOs occasionally used this category for suspected non-citizens or persons whose records could not be properly linked.
These names are excluded from the draft electoral roll in the same manner as the other ASDD categories, and the lists are shared with Booth Level Agents of political parties. Eligible electors retain the right to file Form 6 with the required declaration and supporting documents during the claims and objections period to seek inclusion if they continue to satisfy the conditions of ordinary residence and citizenship.
Due to the requirement of Form 7 or other interventions to remove names from voter lists in case of deaths or shifting, many such incidents are not recorded on time. If even a few years of unreported or unprocessed deaths and migrations remain on the rolls, the total quickly runs into crores. During SIR, family members could mark a relative as “Expired” on the enumeration form itself in many states, and BLOs confirm the same through house-to-house verification. Similarly, BLOs confirmed the voters who had migrated to different places. These names were excluded from the draft rolls of the concerned constituencies. The marking is subject to the claims and objections process if any error is alleged, but it reflects confirmed or strongly indicated deaths or migrations rather than wrongful exclusion of living voters.
Removal of duplicate or multiple entries is an absolute necessity. If the same person is listed in multiple places, he or she may be able to vote in multiple places, or others can vote in his or her name in the old constituency.
Because the ordinary process of removing names of deceased or migrated voters depends heavily on Form 7 submission and manual verification, many names linger. During the Special Intensive Revision this backlog was addressed through systematic field verification and data matching. Booth Level Officers visited addresses, and software tools helped flag demographic similar entries and multiple enrolments. The SIR identified such entries and removed them from the draft rolls after verification. The numbers of removals in the SIR is therefore best understood as the correction of a long-standing backlog created by a manual system, not as an irregular or wrongful exercise.
In line with the legal rule, the entry at the place of current ordinary residence of a voter is retained, or the person is directed to enrol there if not already done, while the older entries are removed. And in all ASDD categories, the draft-stage marking for deletion is subject to claims and objections, but it itself reflects correction of the voter list rather than wrongful deletion of unique voters.
India experiences large-scale internal migration. India’s internal mobility is well documented across multiple official sources, and these figures help explain why an intensive house-to-house verification of electoral rolls produces large numbers of electors marked as permanently shifted or absent. Census 2011 recorded approximately 45.6 crore internal migrants, people whose place of last residence differed from the place of enumeration, accounting for about 37–38 per cent of the population. This was a sharp rise from 31.5 crore in 2001. Roughly 88 per cent of the movement was intra-state, while inter-state migration stood at about 5.4 crore.
Marriage remained the single largest reason overall, especially among women, while employment was the leading driver for men. It must be noted that, apart from inter-state migration, intra-state or even intra-district shift can trigger a change of constituency, requiring adding the name in the new constituency, and deleting the same from the old one.
More recent survey data show the same broad pattern. The Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2020–21 estimated the overall migration rate at 28.9 per cent (26.5 per cent in rural areas and 34.9 per cent in urban areas), with male rates around 10.7 per cent and female rates around 47.9 per cent. Employment-related reasons accounted for a substantial share of male migration. About 86.8 per cent of all female migrations were due to marriage.
The NSS 78th Round Multiple Indicator Survey of the same period found that about 29.1 per cent of persons had a current place of residence different from their last usual place of residence (26.8 per cent rural, 34.6 per cent urban). For men, 49% of the migrations were the result of employment, followed by 17.1% for migration of parents, 8% for studies, and 5.8% for marriages. For women, 87% was due to marriage and 8% for migration of parents.
These two independent exercises are closely consistent with each other and with the longer-term Census trend. Parliament replies cite the Census 2011 figure of approximately 4.14 crore inter-state migrant workers who moved for work or employment.
Administrative databases provide further corroboration, even if they do not map one-to-one onto electoral rolls. The e-Shram portal, launched by the Ministry of Labour and Employment in 2021 to create a portable national database of unorganised workers, including migrants, construction workers, agricultural workers and others, had registered over 31.8 crore unorganised workers by 2026. Women accounted for roughly 54 per cent of registrations, and large numbers came from states with high out-migration such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. While the portal does not publish a national “migrants only” break-up, its scale and design reflect the size of the mobile unorganised workforce.
The Labour Bureau also completed fieldwork for an All India Survey on Migrant Workers covering roughly 1.5 lakh households. A dedicated National Migration Survey is scheduled by the National Statistics Office for July 2026 to June 2027, acknowledging the need for fresher estimates.
Aadhaar data illustrate both the scale of address-related activity and the lag in updates. Cumulative demographic updates (including address changes) have run into tens of crores over the years. As per the latest UIDAI Annual Report, as many as 28.30 crore updates to Aadhaar cards were done in 2024-25 alone, up from 25.78 crore in the previous year. Although this includes all kinds of changes, like change/correction in name, date of birth, gender etc, the most requested updates are changes in phone number and address. Although the specific number of address updates is not available, it is known that address change is one of the major updates, perhaps next to phone number updates.
Numbers for the new Aadhaar app, launched on 28 January this year, confirm this. As per govt data, around 11.65 lakh address updates had been completed through the app since its launch, while 49 lakh mobile number updates have been done. As a large number of people continue to use Aadhaar service centres to make changes to their data, the total number of address changes will be much more.
Taken together, the Census, PLFS, NSS Multiple Indicator Survey, e-Shram registrations, Aadhaar update volumes and other such data all point in the same direction. Tens of crores of Indians have lived at a place different from an earlier usual residence. Document and database updates lag actual movement. As elections come after years, shifting the name in the voter list is often not the priority when a person or a family moves.
When an intensive verification is finally conducted after a long interval, it is therefore unsurprising that large numbers of electors are not found at the address on the roll and are classified as permanently shifted or absent. Many of them re-enrol, or are eligible to re-enrol, at the new place of ordinary residence. The numbers are large because the underlying demographic reality is large, not because the categories themselves are artificial.
Due to the various complexities of the system that resulted in a large number of ghost and duplicate entries in the voter lists, the process of SIR was massive and complex. To handle the task of analysing around 100 crore voters, the Election Commission of India (ECI) entirely overhauled its backend administration through the nationwide deployment of ERONET 2.0, a centralised web-based application designed to manage the world’s largest electoral database. By consolidating over 40 disparate state-level portals into a single “Single Source of Truth,” this architecture provides the algorithmic foundation for the sweeping demographic corrections witnessed during the SIR.
The primary technological justification for the SIR lies in ERONET’s advanced deduplication capabilities. To systematically cleanse the registry of redundant entries, the software runs routine Demographic Similar Entries (DSE) and Photo Similar Entries (PSE) algorithms. These tools mathematically cross-reference phonetic names, relational data, and facial imagery across the entire national database of over 90 crore voters. Consequently, if a migrant registers in a metropolitan hub without submitting a Form 7 to cancel their previous enrolment, ERONET 2.0 flags the anomaly for immediate official review.
Furthermore, the platform meticulously tracks macroeconomic demographic markers to identify structural irregularities. ERONET generates automated alerts for logical errors, such as polling stations exceeding their statutory 1,200 or 1,400 elector limits, or significant deviations in regional gender ratios. These systemic flags compel Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to initiate the field verification drives that characterise the SIR process.
However, the technological identification of a logical error does not result in arbitrary, automated modifications to the active roll. When ERONET generates an error report regarding impossible age gaps, skewed gender ratios, or station overcrowding, the anomalous data is pushed directly to the monitoring dashboards of the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and their assistants. These statutory officers then mandate physical field verification, dispatching Booth Level Officers to the flagged households to ascertain the objective reality on the ground.
Once the physical evidence is collected and the true demographic facts are established, officials resolve the discrepancy through formal administrative channels. They process the appropriate statutory paperwork, such as obtaining a Form 7 to delete or correct erroneous entries, which subsequently updates the database. While critics scrutinise algorithmic interventions in the electoral process, the operational reality is that ERONET merely acts as a digital diagnostic tool. Ultimately, securing a healthy electoral roll requires this exact synthesis of high-speed database analytics and meticulous manual field surveys
Intensive revision of electoral rolls is not a novel or exceptional exercise. The Election Commission of India has undertaken intensive revisions—sometimes described as “special revision of intensive nature”—on multiple occasions since the first general elections. These exercises were carried out, in all or some parts of the country, in 1952–56, 1958–61, 1965–66, 1983–84, 1987–88, 1993, 1995, and 2002–2004.
The early revisions of the 1950s and 1960s were primarily corrective. The rolls prepared for the 1951–52 elections contained significant inaccuracies and omissions. The Commission therefore adopted a phased approach: one-fifth of each state was covered annually between 1952 and 1956, followed by one-third coverage each year from 1957 to 1961, with particular attention to urban and migrant-heavy areas. State reorganisation in 1956 and delimitation exercises in the 1960s further necessitated fresh intensive verification.
In the 1980s the focus broadened. Intensive revisions were undertaken in rural constituencies in 1983 and urban constituencies in 1984, followed by a wider exercise in 1987–88 and a special revision in 1989. These rounds placed greater emphasis on preventing the inclusion of ineligible persons while continuing to address duplicates and shifts. Countrywide intensive revisions were again ordered in 1993 and 1995. The 1993 exercise coincided with the introduction of Electors’ Photo Identity Cards, though the revision itself was directed at improving the accuracy of the rolls rather than solely at the issuance of EPICs.
The last major intensive exercise before the present one occurred between 2002 and 2004. It was conducted in phases across different states, with qualifying dates of 1 January 2002 in some states and later dates in others. The Commission’s Manual on Electoral Rolls described the 2002–2003 round as a “special revision of intensive nature.” In several states, the process extended over six to eight months, longer than the timelines adopted in the current phases. The 2002–2004 rolls later became the reference point for progeny mapping in the 2025–2026 Special Intensive Revision.
In every previous intensive revision, the net result was an increase in the size of the electorate. The present exercise is the first in which the published draft and final rolls show a net reduction. This outcome is the product of a long interval, more than two decades since the last intensive verification, during which ordinary summary revisions and continuous updating proved insufficient to keep pace with deaths, permanent migration, and the accumulation of duplicate entries. When an intensive exercise is finally resumed after such a gap, the volume of corrections is correspondingly large. The same pattern has been observed in other delayed administrative exercises, such as the delimitation of constituencies, where a long suspension of the process leads to larger adjustments when it is eventually resumed.
Delimitation was a routine exercise earlier, but current opposition has made it controversial because it has not been done for decades. Delimitation Commissions were constituted in 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002 under the respective Delimitation Acts, based on the censuses of 1951, 1961, 1971 and 2001. The number of elected Lok Sabha seats rose from 494 after the first exercise to 522 after the 1963 delimitation and then to 543 after the 1973 exercise, reflecting population growth and the creation of new states. State Assembly seats increased correspondingly, from roughly 3,280 in 1952 to about 4,123 by the time of the 2002 exercise. After 1976, however, the 42nd Constitutional Amendment froze the allocation of seats among states for 25 years on the basis of the 1971 Census figures. Then the 84th Amendment extended this freeze until the first census taken after 2026. The 2002 Delimitation Commission, which completed its work in 2008, could only redraw internal constituency boundaries within states and adjust reserved seats; it could not alter the total number of Lok Sabha seats or their inter-state apportionment.
The long suspension of seat reallocation, nearly five decades by the time the next delimitation becomes due, means that any future exercise will involve substantially larger adjustments than those of earlier decades. The same logic applies to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. When a routine statutory process is deferred for an extended period, the volume of corrections that accumulate is correspondingly large when the exercise is finally resumed. In both cases the underlying legal framework remains unchanged; what has changed is the scale of the backlog created by the delay. The present controversy over the SIR, like the debates that have periodically attended delimitation, arises principally from the size of the adjustment required after a prolonged pause rather than from any departure from established statutory practice.
The recent SIR of electoral rolls has exposed a severe structural vulnerability in India’s democratic machinery. These massive revisions highlight the systemic inability of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to seamlessly track a highly mobile population in real time.
Consequently, the current mechanism relies on isolated lists managed separately by individual states and Union Territories rather than a single dynamic registry. This decentralisation previously resulted in the bizarre administrative anomaly where different states independently allotted identical EPIC numbers to completely separate citizens. Without real-time central cross-verification, regional authorities operated in data silos, allowing widespread duplication to persist unchecked.
In an era of rapid urbanisation, millions of Indian citizens migrate across constituencies every year seeking employment and for other reasons. However, there is no automated transfer of a citizen’s franchise when they change their permanent residence. Instead, the burden of updating the electoral roll falls entirely on the migrant, who must manually navigate complex paperwork such as Form 8 for shifting and Form 7 for deletion with Form 6 for enrolment in location.
Because navigating these bureaucratic hurdles requires significant administrative literacy, millions of internal migrants simply abandon the formal transfer process. They subsequently register as entirely new voters in their destination cities while their names remain active on the electoral lists of their home states. This phenomenon directly artificially inflates the national database, creating a massive pool of untraceable entries that local Booth Level Officers struggle to verify.
Moreover, this constituency-level isolation severely complicates the timely removal of deceased voters from the active registries. Currently, local municipal bodies issue civil death certificates, but this essential data is not automatically integrated with the ECI’s ERONET system. A deceased citizen remains a valid elector until a family member proactively submits a deletion request or a physical verification drive uncovers the death.
These systemic loopholes explain why the recent Special Intensive Revision yielded such staggering figures across the nation. Therefore, updating the electoral rolls to reflect even a fraction of this demographic movement naturally results in tens of millions of administrative corrections.
To resolve these persistent data discrepancies, the electoral framework must transition from a passive ledger to a dynamically updated national ecosystem. The ECI must fully dismantle state-level silos by deploying a unified central registry where every voter is mapped to a unique, nationally verifiable identity. Furthermore, voter registration should automatically update when citizens officially change their foundational identity addresses, entirely eliminating the reliance on multiple forms.
Finally, establishing a direct API integration between the central database and the national registry of births and deaths would eradicate the persistence of ghost voters. By centralising this data architecture, the commission can proactively de-duplicate the rolls using real-time analytics instead of relying on manual field surveys. Ultimately, securing the integrity of Indian elections requires modernising the backend infrastructure to match the fluid, dynamic realities of its electorate.
Greater integration with civil registration systems, real-time death reporting, and easier online shifting mechanisms would reduce the backlog that intensive revisions must clear. Until that infrastructure is fully mature, large ASDD numbers during an intensive exercise are an expected feature of the system, not proof of a conspiracy to delete voters.
The claims of 13 crore wrongful deletions rest on equating draft-stage ASDD classifications with final, irreversible removal of eligible citizens. The breakdown shows that deaths and duplicates are legitimate cleaning categories. Permanently shifted entries are removals from the old constituency’s roll pending re-enrolment at the new place of ordinary residence; they are not automatic national deletions, nor are they automatic transfers. Absent/untraceable cases reflect verification realities and are correctable through claims. Official migration statistics from the Census and PLFS confirm that large numbers of Indians live away from earlier residences, providing a demographic basis for substantial shifted and absent numbers. The controversy has been amplified by the long gap since the last intensive revision — much as the long freeze on delimitation will make the next exercise appear transformative — and by the practical limitations of a decentralised, form-driven system.
Eligible electors whose names are missing retain the right to file claims. The ECI’s special drives after SIR and the claims process exist to restore those who were wrongly left out. Treating every draft exclusion as permanent disenfranchisement, and every permanently shifted marking as evidence of vote theft, does not align with the process, the numbers, or India’s migration patterns. Accurate rolls require both inclusion of the eligible and exclusion of the ineligible. The SIR is an attempt to address the latter after a long interval; the safeguards for the former remain available.
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