4% of Assam voters marked for deletion

THe Election charge (EC) has pronounced 1.06 jillion names for cut from the electoral rolls of Assam followers a special revision exercise that involved house-to-house verification across the state, officials announced on Saturday with the release of the integrated draft electoral roll.The state, which goes to the polls in less than six months, now has 25,109,754 registered voters in the draft roll, excluding 93,021 D-voters — individuals who are disenfranchised due to alleged lack of proper citizenship credentials.Of the names marked for deletion, 479,000 were identified due to deaths, 524,000 because voters had shifted from their registered addresses, and 53,619 for being demographically similar entries or multiple registrations. The proposed removals account for roughly 4% of the electoral roll before revision. The process now enters the claims and objections phase, with voters able to submit applications between December 27, 2025, and January 22, 2026. The final electoral rolls will be published on February 10.Assam is conducting a special revision (SR) instead of the special intensive revision (SIR) being carried out in 12 other states and Union territories, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The differentiation stems from the ongoing National Register of Citizens (NRC) update in Assam, which remains incomplete and operates under Supreme Court supervision. “Under the Citizenship Act, there are separate provisions for citizenship in Assam. Under the supervision of the Supreme Court, the exercise of checking citizenship is about to be completed,” chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said while announcing the SIR drives in late October.The SR, conducted between November 22 and December 20 with January 1, 2026, as the qualifying date, differs from SIR in that voters don’t have to show links to a base voter roll or submit proof of identity to back their application. Instead, the exercise focuses on the public voluntarily submitting forms for new voter enrolment, raising objections to existing entries, or seeking corrections.The administrative machinery deployed 29,656 BLOs and 2,578 BLO supervisors who visited 6.1 million households across the state during the verification phase. The exercise also involved 35 district election officers, 126 electoral registration officers and 1,260 assistant electoral registration officers. Political parties deployed 61,533 booth-level agents to assist and monitor the process. “The purification of electoral rolls during the current SR cycle is a meticulous administrative effort focussed on enhancing the integrity of the electoral roll ahead of the 2026 assembly elections,” the EC said in a statement. The state’s voter base comprises 12,572,583 men, 12,628,662 women and 379 voters categorised as ‘others’.D-voters are determined by special tribunals under the Foreigners Act, 1946. Those declared as D-voters are not issued voter cards, though their particulars—including name, age and photograph—have been carried forward to the draft electoral roll without change.The EC outlined four criteria for voter enrolment: individuals must hold Indian citizenship, meet the minimum age requirement, be ordinarily resident in the constituency where they seek registration, and must not be legally barred from voting or declared to be of unsound mind.According to officials quoted by news agency PTI, the SR is positioned between the annual special summary revision and the more comprehensive SIR.The state has 31,486 polling stations following rationalisation.