India’s voter-roll cleanup left 13.37 crore names out
The ECI now needs a special enrolment drive across 20 states and Union territories, plus a software review. The cleanup appears to need cleaning up.
The correction drive follows the draft-roll exclusions.
The Election Commission of India’s voter-roll revision left 13.37 crore names out of draft electoral rolls across 30 states and Union territories, according to ECI data reported by ABP Live. The figure is from the draft stage, not a final count of permanently deleted voters. That distinction matters. So does the fact that the number is larger than the population of most countries.
The ECI subsequently ordered a special enrolment drive in 20 states and Union territories where the exercise had been completed. Its September 26 press note says anyone left out during the revision can apply to an Electoral Registration Officer through the continuous-updation process, while Chief Electoral Officers, District Electoral Officers and EROs must launch an immediate drive to enrol them. The ECI has also ordered a review of its ECINet system by a committee including an independent IIT or IIIT expert.
The correction route is not automatic restoration. For many excluded voters, it is a fresh Form 6 application. In Goa, the ECI says 81 of 97 voters left out of the roll had submitted Form 6 applications. Reporting on the case says officials had cleared the voters but the system did not provide a way to reverse the deletion. A voter-roll exercise that needs a second exercise to find the people missed by the first is not the smooth constitutional housekeeping the Centre has been advertising.
The Union government says the revision is lawful, backed by safeguards, claims and objections, appeals and repeated field visits. The Supreme Court’s reported May 27, 2026 ruling recognised the ECI’s authority to conduct it; it did not certify every deletion or declare the machinery infallible. Nor does the material reviewed prove deliberate, centrally directed voter suppression. It does establish mass draft-stage exclusion, documented administrative failure and a corrective drive after the fact. The BJP-led Centre can call that verification. Voters are entitled to call it a system that misplaced millions and then issued them paperwork to prove they still exist.