Hyderabad “40% deletions”? Not so fast
A report leapt from slow digitisation to mass deletion. The record, including the CEO’s own line, doesn’t go that far — and Hyderabad’s “missing” count already crashed after verification last month.
A pending entry is not yet a deletion.
A claim doing the rounds says Hyderabad’s voter list could shrink by 40% under the Special Summary Revision (SIR), because forms for 19.47 lakh electors weren’t digitised by 6 pm on August 10. The arithmetic checks out — 47,36,669 electors pre-SIR, 27,89,214 forms digitised, a 41.11% gap — but the leap from “not digitised yet” to “deleted” does not. The figure is from a status update attributed to the Telangana CEO; the final roll was still to go through claims and objections from August 17, with Form 6 open to voters. [Source: a report citing the CEO’s status note]
Hyderabad has already shown why “missing” is not “gone”. On July 16, the GHMC election wing counted 11,52,613 electors as ASD (absent/shifted/dead) — 24.33% of the roll. After a verification drive, that fell to 2.60 lakh by July 21, according to the district election officer. That’s what checking does: it separates a locked door from a ghost address.
The CEO’s public line in June was clear: the SIR is to update and purify rolls, not remove genuine electors. Minor anomalies get notices and hearings; most are corrected after documents are examined. Treating every non-digitised entry as a confirmed deletion ignores the process the Election Commission itself says it will run.
Also missing from the 40% panic: a Hyderabad-specific ASDD (absent, shifted, duplicate, death) breakdown. Telangana-wide counts of “uncollectable forms” exist, but they are not Hyderabad numbers. Conflating them makes for a punchy headline and a poor record.
Voters still have to do their bit — file, correct, show up — but the story here is procedure, not a purge. If someone wants to sell a mass deletion, they can start by producing the Hyderabad deletions list. With categories. And dates.