Massive Voter Deletions Mark UP’s Electoral Roll Revision, Urban Districts Hit Hardest
The first phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh concluded on Friday with a striking outcome: 2.89 crore voters, out of the state’s total 15.44 crore, have been marked for deletion after their enumeration forms were found to be “uncollected,” officials confirmed.
An analysis of the data reveals a clear trend — urban districts have witnessed significantly higher deletions compared to rural areas, raising political and administrative concerns ahead of upcoming elections.
Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said the draft electoral roll will be published on December 31, with the claims and objections window open from December 31 to January 30, 2026. The final voter list is scheduled for release on February 28, 2026.
Scale and Categories of Deletions
Of the 2.89 crore voters flagged for deletion:
- 1.30 crore are marked as permanently shifted or migrated
- 79.52 lakh as absent or untraceable
- 46.24 lakh as deceased
- 25.47 lakh as duplicate entries
- 7.74 lakh fall under other categories
Together, these deletions account for 18.7% of the electorate in the last published roll. After accounting for them, 12.55 crore voters will figure in the draft roll.
Urban Centres Lead Deletions
Among districts with the highest proportion of deletions:
- Lucknow tops the list with 30% voters (around 12 lakh) flagged
- Ghaziabad follows at 28.83% (8.18 lakh)
- Kanpur Nagar (25.50%), Meerut (24.66%), Prayagraj (24.64%), Gautam Buddha Nagar (23.94%) and Agra (23.25%) also report unusually high numbers
Several semi-urban and rural districts are not far behind, including Hapur, Shahjahanpur, Kannauj, Bareilly, Farrukhabad, Badaun, Siddharth Nagar and Sambhal, each recording deletions of over 20%.
“Untraceable” and Migrant Voters
Voters classified as absent or untraceable are those who could not be located at their listed addresses during visits by booth-level officers (BLOs), and whose neighbours could provide no information.
The highest numbers of such voters were recorded in Lucknow, Prayagraj, Ghaziabad, Kanpur Nagar, Agra and Bareilly.
Meanwhile, deletions due to permanent migration were most pronounced in Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Meerut, Kanpur Nagar and Prayagraj, reflecting large-scale urban mobility.
Border District an Exception
Balrampur, located along the Nepal border, emerged as a notable exception to the urban pattern, with 25.98% forms marked uncollected and over 10% voters categorised as untraceable, placing it alongside Ghaziabad and Lucknow in this category.
Officials also disclosed that 1.04 crore voters remain “unmapped”, as no parental or personal data could be traced back to the previous SIR conducted in 2003. Their digitised forms will now be followed up with formal notices.
Political Ripples
With such a surprisingly large number of deletions, political parties across the spectrum have begun questioning the process and its potential impact.
As the SIR exercise is being carried out nationwide, the debate has intensified over which social and political constituencies may ultimately benefit — or lose — from this unprecedented clean-up of electoral rolls.
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