Bhubaneswar: BJD MP Sasmit Patra Tuesday urged the Election Commission of India Tuesday to ensure that the names of voters should not be deleted without a rigorous, documented, and independently verifiable field inquiry.
Patra, in a letter to the CEC Gyanesh Kumar, said, It has been administratively acknowledged that approximately 9.8 lakh electors have been identified for potential deletion during the preliminary verification phase… the scale, pattern, and process underlying these proposed deletions raise serious and substantive concerns.
He said, There now exists prima facie evidence derived from multiple independent reports as well as statements attributable to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Odisha – suggesting procedural irregularities and a real risk of wrongful disenfranchisement.
Odisha Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) R S Gopalan Monday said his office has received over 2 lakh complaints over the deletion of voters from the electoral roll. He has asked the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) in all districts to verify the matter.
The BJD MP in the letter urged the CEC to ensure that no deletion is finalised without a rigorous, documented, and independently verifiable field inquiry.
Direct a comprehensive, state-wide re-verification of all cases flagged for deletion during the preparatory phase and mandate full transparency through public disclosure of constituency-wise and category-wise data on proposed deletions, along with reasons, Patra said.
The BJD leader also asked the CEC to establish an independent audit or supervisory mechanism in districts where large-scale discrepancies have been reported.
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Meanwhile, former minister and BJD MLA Ranendra Pratap Swain alleged that it was a political conspiracy to delete voters’ names from the electoral roll.
Attempt to delete 9.8 lakh voters is not just an administrative error, but a political conspiracy which has earlier been done in other states also, Swain said.
He demanded that the CEO verify all the cases before finally deleting the names of voters.
In the last Assembly session, I had raised this issue with the government. There is a discrepancy of two lakh between the government’s response and the final number of deleted voters, which has cast suspicion on this entire process, Swain said.
He said the chief minister had informed the Assembly that approximately 7.68 lakh names were deleted between June 2025 and March 22, 2026; now the CEO’s office has identified the number as 9.8 lakh.