99% of Maharashtra’s SIR-Flagged Voters Restored to Electoral Rolls, 72,601 Still Pending
Maharashtra has restored 99.41% of the 1.22 crore voters who were served notices during the state’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, according to a report by Scroll.in, which cites Hindustan Times. Only 72,601 voters remain pending.
What happened
Of the 1,22,24,007 voters flagged during Maharashtra’s SIR, 62.5 lakh received notices for “logical discrepancies” in their records and 59.7 lakh for not being linked to the state’s 2002 electoral roll, the last time a similar revision was conducted, according to the Scroll.in report citing Hindustan Times.
The remaining 72,601 voters have either not yet submitted identity documents or are still being verified. NewsBytes independently reported the same pending figure as of November 14, corroborating the restoration numbers.
Maharashtra’s draft electoral roll, published on August 31, had initially removed more than 2 crore names, about 21.1% of the state’s pre-revision voter base, before this restoration process began.
Why so many voters were flagged
Scroll.in’s report says voters who had been issued notices were added back to the rolls after the Election Commission expanded the list of accepted identity documents to include PAN cards and Aadhaar cards, broadening what counted as acceptable proof during verification.
The two main reasons behind the notices point to different kinds of record problems. The 62.5 lakh “logical discrepancy” notices typically cover mismatches such as a voter’s name, age, or address not matching across different parts of the electoral database. The 59.7 lakh notices for voters not linked to the 2002 roll cover people who were added to Maharashtra’s rolls after that year and had no record to cross-check against during this revision, since 2002 was the last time the state ran a similar exercise.
Maharashtra’s Chief Electoral Officer’s office has also clarified that voters marked “Already Enrolled” during the exercise are not being permanently excluded from the electoral system. According to that clarification, such voters were removed only from one specific part or location in the rolls because their names were found registered elsewhere, not because they are being denied a vote altogether.
Part of a wider pattern across states
Maharashtra’s SIR is part of a wider nationwide exercise that has drawn repeated court challenges and political disputes over voter deletions this year. The Election Commission gave voters dropped from SIR draft rolls in Delhi and six other states, including Maharashtra, a chance to reapply through fresh enumeration forms before their final rolls were published.
In Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court questioned the Election Commission over bulk Form 6 and Form 7 filings used to delete voters from draft rolls, and ordered the commission to act against mass filings. In Karnataka, the chief electoral office admitted that duplicate voter IDs had been issued to the same people during its own revision, with 803 IDs traced to 397 people in Mahadevapura constituency alone.
The scale of these revisions is large enough that even small percentage errors translate into hundreds of thousands of affected voters. Maharashtra’s own draft roll removed more than 2 crore names at the first stage, a reminder of why the subsequent claims-and-objections window, where most of the 1.22 crore notified voters have now been cleared, matters as much as the initial enumeration.
What happens next
The window for voters to file claims and objections on Maharashtra’s draft roll closed on Friday, and the Election Commission’s deadline to dispose of those claims is November 25. Maharashtra’s final electoral roll after SIR is scheduled for publication on November 30, per the Scroll.in report.
Whether the 72,601 voters still pending get restored before that final roll is published will determine how many Maharashtra residents are eligible to vote in the state’s next elections under the revised rolls. Any further figures the Election Commission or Maharashtra’s Chief Electoral Officer releases before November 30 will clarify how many of those pending cases were resolved in time.
Frequently asked questions
How many voters were restored to Maharashtra’s rolls after SIR notices?
99.41% of the 1.22 crore voters served notices, that is all but 72,601 of them, have been added back to the electoral rolls, according to the Scroll.in report citing Hindustan Times and corroborated by NewsBytes.
When will Maharashtra’s final SIR electoral roll be published?
November 30, 2026, after the Election Commission finishes disposing of claims and objections by November 25.
What documents could voters use to clear a notice?
The Election Commission expanded the accepted identity documents to include PAN cards and Aadhaar cards, according to Scroll.in’s report, which helped most flagged voters clear verification.
Leave a Reply