Shafaqna India: With Assam heading for the Assembly elections in less than six months, the Election Commission on Saturday released the state’s integrated draft electoral rolls, revealing that over 10.56 lakh voter names have been deleted following a special intensive revision (SIR) exercise. The move has triggered fresh political scrutiny over voter list revisions across poll-bound states.
According to the draft rolls, Assam now has 2,51,09,754 electors, excluding 93,021 “D-Voters” — a category of doubtful voters whose citizenship status is under adjudication. The deletions account for deaths, migration and multiple or duplicate entries, the EC said.
The SIR, conducted through house-to-house verification between November 22 and December 20, covered more than 61 lakh households across the state. Officials said the exercise aimed at producing an error-free roll ahead of elections.
Of the names deleted, 4.78 lakh were removed due to deaths, 5.23 lakh owing to electors shifting residence, while 53,619 entries were flagged as demographically similar and corrected. Claims and objections can be filed till January 22, with the final rolls scheduled for publication on February 10.
The draft rolls retain all particulars — name, age and photograph — of “D-Voters” without alteration. Under Assam’s unique citizenship regime, such voters are disenfranchised pending decisions by Foreigners’ Tribunals under the Foreigners Act, 1946, and are not issued voter identity cards.
Election officials said the Assam exercise differed from the SIR currently underway in 12 states and UT, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. “The Assam revision lies between an annual summary revision and a full SIR, keeping in view the state’s special citizenship provisions,” an official said.
Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has earlier noted that citizenship determination in Assam is governed by distinct legal provisions and is nearing completion under Supreme Court supervision.
The scale of the operation was significant, involving 35 district election officers, 126 electoral registration officers, over 29,600 booth-level officers and more than 61,500 booth-level agents deployed by political parties. Assam now has 31,486 polling stations after rationalisation.
Meanwhile, the issue of electoral roll revisions has sparked political friction in West Bengal, where a 10-member Trinamool Congress delegation is slated to meet the CEC on December 31. The delegation is expected to raise objections to the ongoing SIR exercise in the state.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Saturday demanded that the EC disclose how many alleged illegal Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya figured among the 58.20 lakh names deleted from West Bengal’s draft rolls.
Addressing a press conference in Kolkata, Banerjee said he would give a timeframe to the EC to publish the list and would gherao its office if the demand was not met.
“I will go to Delhi on December 31 and meet the CEC and seek an answer. Why is the EC not coming out with the list of names? Is this figure meant to reach the target of 1-1.5 crore that the BJP has set for deletions of names following the SIR in Bengal?” he asked.