Media365
Surjit Bhalla’s article (‘An entitled generation and an Opposition that protests too much’, IE, October 17) is a good occasion to revisit the big question: Has the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) led to mass disenfranchisement in India? In a fuller piece published on his Substack, Bhalla claims that this is “Much Ado about (almost) Nothing”, since unfair exclusion may have been one-twentieth of what the critics claim.
Much of the discussion on the SIR has focused on the exclusions from the existing voter list. Critics of the SIR often cite the deletion of 13.3 crore names from the pre-SIR voter lists as proof of disenfranchisement. Supporters of the SIR usually respond by saying that existing lists were inflated, and that the deletions are of names that were found to be Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate (ASDD, in the ECI’s language). Yet in the absence of a large-scale and reliable audit, the debate generates more smoke than light.
Fortunately, there is another independent and robust method to evaluate the outcome of the SIR. We can compare the size of the post-SIR voter lists with official estimates of the adult population that is eligible to vote. Indeed, the ECI itself has been using these population estimates as a benchmark to evaluate its voter lists. The comparison shows that the charge of disenfranchisement is justified. It also gives a sense of the final number of “missing voters”.
The accompanying table summarises these figures for the nine major states discussed by Bhalla (the major states covered by Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the SIR). The first column presents the estimates by the Technical Group on Population Projections of each state’s adult population in early 2026. These are fairly recent projections, not actual counts. But they are unlikely to be far off (except for minor overestimation due to unanticipated Covid mortality), since every person of voting age today was born before and counted in 2011. The second column presents the number of voters on the SIR’s “final list” in the respective states. The last two columns present the gap between the adult population and voters on the final list, both in absolute terms (third column) and as a proportion of the adult population (last column).
The results are startling. For these nine states combined, the voter list falls short of the adult population by more than 7 crore. Almost 12 per cent of the adult population is excluded. In Uttar Pradesh alone, 2.8 crore are excluded —more than 17 per cent of the adult population. If the average exclusion rate of 12 per cent for these nine states is representative of the whole country, then the total number of excluded adults or “missing voters” would be around 12 crore.
Trends from the ongoing third phase of the SIR suggest that the actual number may be even bigger. The draft SIR lists have been released for all states except Himachal and J&K. Exclusion rates at the draft list stage have been much higher in the third phase. Assuming that these draft lists will undergo the same level of corrections as the first two phases, Rahul Shastri estimates that the final post-SIR voter list for the entire country will be around 87.8 crore. (This estimate does not take into account any corrective action the ECI may undertake from now on to undo the damage).
Compare this to India’s current adult population of about 101.6 crore. We are staring at a staggering figure of about 14 crore “missing voters” — adult Indians eligible to vote but excluded from the final electoral rolls. These disenfranchised voters comprise those eligible voters who featured on the pre-SIR list and were wrongfully removed during the SIR, as well as persons who should have been added to the voter list but were not.
Bhalla acknowledges the wide discrepancy between the size of the adult population and the voter list. But he disputes the view that it indicates disenfranchisement. His argument is that we should not expect the voter list to match the adult population. He invokes a significant proportion of under-enrolment of young adults in 2024, as much as 7.5 per cent of the total adult population that year. He assumes that this deficit represents voluntary non-registration. Adding one percentage point for a similar deficit among the rest, he arrives at a benchmark figure of 8.5 per cent for normal shortfall. Only an exclusion above this level, he argues, should be considered excessive or unfair.
We disagree. First, in India, the voter ID is a critical document that most people are keen to have — all the more so today, when citizens without a voter ID are at risk of being deprived of various services. Voluntary non-registration is not seen as a common phenomenon by the media, political parties or the ECI. Second, voter registration in India has been state initiated. Therefore, non-registration is a failure of the electoral officials that can be rectified, rather than a shortfall to be accepted. If anything, a special revision of the voter list should have focused on this deficiency. Indeed, in some earlier years, the enrolment gap among the young was much lower than 7.5 per cent — for example, it was 5.2 per cent of the total adult population in 2014.
Even if we were to accept Bhalla’s inflated benchmark of 8.5 per cent for voluntary non-registration, there would still be 14 million unfairly excluded voters in Uttar Pradesh alone. This clearly jars with Bhalla’s claim that only 7 million were excluded in the nine states combined. Bhalla gets around this by raising the threshold of acceptable non-registration well above 8.5 per cent for UP, on the grounds that 40 per cent of adults aged 18-29 were not registered there in 2024. That is like saying that if you skipped breakfast, then you might as well skip lunch too.
A few weeks ago, we read Bhalla protesting passionately about the possible exclusion of one vote — his own. How would an exclusion of many crores qualify as “Much ado about (almost) nothing”?
Drèze is visiting professor, Department of Economics, Ranchi University. Yadav is member, Swaraj India, and national convenor, Bharat Jodo Abhiyan.
