New Delhi: The Congress urged Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar Saturday to take prompt action on concerns raised by Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy regarding the large-scale deletion of names from the voter list during a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in the state.
Describing the deletions as mind-boggling and totally unacceptable, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh hoped that the CEC would take quick action on the concerns raised by Reddy.
Ramesh shared on X a letter from the Telangana chief minister to the CEC, in which Reddy has flagged that the names of nearly one-third of the voters in the southern state have been deleted from the electoral rolls during the SIR and provided suggestions to ensure that no eligible elector is left out.
The CM of Telangana has just written to the CEC on the simply mind-boggling and totally unacceptable scale of deletions in the SIR exercise in the state.
We expect the CEC to take prompt action on the very real concerns raised by the CM, Ramesh said in his post along with the letter.
In his letter to the CEC, Reddy has said the SIR exercise has now reached a stage where the numbers themselves should invite the EC’s attention.
Measured against the roll of 3.38 crore electors as it stood on 10.06.2026, some 73.39 lakh entries (21.7 per cent) have been placed under the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate heads. Out of the 2.65 crore enumeration forms digitised so far, 60.50 lakh stand flagged for anomalies and 32.36 lakh for want of a link to the earlier roll.
The two sets are distinct and do not overlap; they add up to 92.86 lakh and each of those electors is to be put on notice. Stated plainly, something close to one-third of the state’s electorate must now either prove its entitlement afresh or lose its place on the final roll, the chief minister has pointed out.
He has added that the composition of the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD) list is a matter of grave concern. Of the 73.39 lakh flagged entries, 45.19 lakh (nearly 62 per cent) are classified as permanently shifted, he has claimed.
Reddy has also pointed to critical structural flaws in the current verification methodology, noting that there is no distinction between temporary absence and permanent relocation, nor is there facilitation for genuine movers.
He has claimed that consequently, a large number of eligible citizens have systematically been denied natural justice and will likely discover their disenfranchisement only when they are turned away at the polling booth on election day.
The entire SIR load is also distributed very unevenly across the state. Hyderabad, Medchal-Malkajgiri and Rangareddy districts hold a third of the state’s electors between them, yet account for 58.6 per cent of all ASDD entries and 41.9 per cent of all verification notices, the chief minister has said, adding that these are the very districts where tenancies are short, work draws families across ward and district boundaries several times in a decade and a continuous paper record of residence is hardest to assemble.
He has also urged that the revision be so calibrated that ordinary mobility does not operate as a disqualification for the electors.
Reddy has also put forward a set of suggestions to remove the anomalies and called for enlarging the window for claims and objections, and public readings of the draft rolls, allowing an elector a reasonable period of time to reply to the notice, opening helpdesks, settling a list of documents that an elector can actually obtain and strengthening capacity at the electoral registration officer (ERO) level.
The objective of the whole exercise is to ensure that not a single eligible elector is left out of the rolls and no ineligible voter is included. The outcome of the exercise should inspire confidence in the electors and none should be omitted from the rolls for want of time or opportunity to establish hisher eligibility, the chief minister has said in his letter to the CEC.
He has said the Telangana government is happy to assure the EC of all possible assistance, including opening helpdesks, mobilising the administration for convening gram sabhas and ward committee meetings.
