Bengaluru Voter Count Plunges 43% After SIR

Bengaluru: Bengaluru's electorate, which stood at 1.03 crore before the SIR process began, has now declined by 43.13 per cent to 59.08 lakh following the publication of the final electoral roll on October 27.

Following the Special Intensive Revision, a total of 59,08,151 voters come under the area of the Greater Bengaluru Authority. Of them, 28.67 lakh were men, 30.40 lakh were women and 674 belonged to the 'others' category.

Of the total 59.08 lakh voters in the city, Bengaluru Urban has 24.01 lakh voters, BBMP (North) has 13.25 lakh, BBMP (South) has 11.13 lakh, BBMP (Central) has 10.67 lakh and Bengaluru Rural has 8.04 lakh.

According to official data, 46.88 lakh names were listed under the ASDDO (Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others) category across 28 Assembly constituencies within the GBA limits in the final electoral roll. Of these, 7.27 lakh were marked absent, 32.74 lakh marked as permanently shifted, 3.19 lakh as dead and 63,549 as already enrolled (duplicate).

Among Bengaluru's Assembly constituencies, the ASDDO status report showed that the maximum number of deletions were from Bengaluru South with 3.63 lakh voters, followed by Mahadevapura with 2.96 lakh, Bommanahalli at 2.65 lakh and K R Puram with 2.58 lakh. These constituencies are currently represented by BJP MLAs.

Last year, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had alleged large-scale inclusion of fake voters in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency's electoral rolls ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The data also showed that Shivajinagar, a constituency with a considerable minority population in the city, saw deletion of 81,236 voters.

Bengaluru South, which witnessed the highest number of deletions, also had the highest number of voters at over 4.41 lakh, while Rajajinagar had the lowest at over 1.13 lakh following the SIR exercise.

According to GBA, compared to the draft electoral roll, a total of 2.74 lakh voters were newly added to the final electoral roll within the GBA limits. Details of 1,81,053 voters were modified, while the names of 65,881 voters were deleted.

As a result of the exercise, there was a net increase of 2.08 lakh voters in the final electoral roll in the city, it stated.

Analysis of district-wise data showed that Belagavi, which had the highest number of electors at 41.07 lakh before the SIR process began, now has 36.35 lakh following the exercise. Bengaluru Urban, which had 40.21 lakh voters, has seen its electorate decline to 24.01 lakh, while Mysuru's electorate has fallen from 27.99 lakh to 22.80 lakh.

However, these three districts remain to have the maximum number of electors in the same order post SIR process.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer V Anbukkumar assured that no voter has been deleted merely because a Form 7 application was submitted in bulk.

He said that not even a single eligible voter had been deleted and that applications submitted through Form 6 had been verified, with eligible applicants included in the electoral roll.

"There should be no confusion or apprehension that eligible voters have been left out arbitrarily. The process has been conducted transparently and in accordance with the law," the CEO had said.

Responding to a question about the number of foreigners identified in the state during the SIR process, he said, "Yes, we have detected foreigners. Their number is definitely less than 1,000."

According to sources, most of the foreigners marked for deletion from the electoral rolls were reportedly from Nepal.

He said that the publication of the final electoral roll did not bring the revision process to an end, as electoral rolls are continuously updated.