Alive, but off the roll: the voters SIR left behind in Bhopal
Madhya Pradesh's SIR cut 34.25 lakh names. In Bhopal, families who never moved found themselves off the roll. IPB traces how it happens and the way back.
Abid Ali has lived at the same address in Bhopal’s Bhim Nagar for 30 years. This year he found that his name, and his mother’s, had been struck off the voter list. He told ANI on 14 October that an unidentified person had filed a form claiming the family no longer lived there, and that nobody came to the door to check before the names disappeared.
The Ali household is one entry in a very large number. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls took Madhya Pradesh from more than 5.74 crore voters to a final roll of 5,39,81,065, a cut of 34,25,078 names. Many were people who had died or moved. But some, like Ali, say they never went anywhere. For anyone who finds their name deleted from the voter list in SIR, the questions are the same: who removed it, on what grounds, and how fast can it come back?
What the numbers say
The SIR is meant to clean rolls of dead, permanently shifted, duplicate and non-citizen voters while keeping every eligible citizen on them. It began in Bihar in July 2025 and has since moved state by state.
In Madhya Pradesh, booth level officers (BLOs) went door to door until 23 December 2025. That first phase removed 42.74 lakh names from the draft roll. Notices to “unmapped” voters then brought nearly 8.5 lakh people back before the final list. The deletions were not spread evenly: Bhopal’s Narela constituency alone has 65,579 fewer voters than it did in 2023, ETV Bharat reported.
Nationally, the exercise has excluded about 13.3 crore names from draft rolls. Roughly 9.5 crore of those fall under the “absent” or “shifted” categories, according to an analysis in Counterview. Those are the categories where mistakes are easiest to make, because they rest on whether an officer found someone at home.
How a name gets deleted from the voter list
The main route out is Form 7. It lets a registered voter object to someone else’s entry, or ask for a name to be removed because the person has died or shifted. The Election Commission has said that filing the form does not by itself delete anyone. The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) is supposed to examine the objection first. In December 2024, the Commission told Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer that no deletion can happen without Form 7, that EROs must personally verify certain cases, and that lists of objections should be shared with political parties.
The system has been abused before. In Karnataka’s Aland constituency, 6,018 Form 7 applications were filed online ahead of the 2023 Assembly election. The case led the Commission to add a one-time password check for anyone filing online.
An investigation by The Reporters’ Collective, published on 9 October, shows how the process can be bent from the inside. It scraped every Form 7 that Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Electoral Officer posted online during that state’s SIR, more than 4.3 lakh of them. Of these, 87,127 were filed by EROs and assistant EROs themselves, and 85,854 gave no reason at all. Election officers told the Collective that the Commission’s ERONET software generated the forms automatically, carrying their digital signatures, whenever they did not approve a voter at a hearing. The rules require a stated reason for every deletion.
The same investigation found 1,10,476 deletion requests accepted after the legal deadline. In two constituencies, Tarabganj and Pilibhit, it found that 90% of objections targeted Muslim voters, with hundreds filed under a single name on the same day. The Uttar Pradesh CEO and the Election Commission did not respond to the Collective’s questions before publication.
Not only Madhya Pradesh
In Karnataka’s Vijayapura, three women produced Aadhaar and other documents to prove they were alive after their names appeared on a list of 1,054 voters described as dead. The list had been submitted for deletion by the local MLA, Basanagouda R Patil Yatnal, The Week reported. The women demanded action against those responsible.
In West Bengal, the Mumbai-based comic Brijesh Jha found that his name, his father’s and his sister’s had been removed. He made a parody video about it, which Instagram later took down.
The pattern in each case is similar. The person deleted is often the last to know, and the burden of proof falls on them. Voter-roll trouble is not new, either: IPB looked at the strain on the vote in Election woes in Bihar and the fate of Bihar’s elections during Covid-19.
What the Election Commission says
The Commission says the revision is about accuracy: rolls that went uncleaned for two decades carried dead voters and people registered in two places. On 29 September it told states to compare their rolls from before and after SIR, identify eligible voters who were deleted, and re-enrol them through Form 6.
In Bhopal, BLOs are now going door to door. An official told ANI that people who were deleted can apply with a copy of their old voter ID, their Aadhaar and the form. A BJP leader in the state, Brij Gopal Loya, told the agency that no voter had been removed through an improper process.
Residents in Bhim Nagar told ANI a different story: some were still waiting for anyone to visit, and in some households one family member remained on the roll while another had vanished from it.
The wider picture
The SIR has been in the Supreme Court since Bihar. In August 2025 the court ordered the Commission to publish the 65 lakh names dropped from Bihar’s draft roll, along with the reasons. Last month, an Indian Express investigation reported that two of the three election commissioners had formally objected at least 14 times to SIR decisions, Al Jazeera noted. The exercise is now at the centre of street protests demanding the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation. For daily updates on the protests, follow IPB News.
Those protests get the headlines. The quieter question is what happens to the voter who simply wants their name back.
How to check your name and get it back
- Search for your name on voters.eci.gov.in or in the ECINET app.
- If it is missing and you are eligible, fill in Form 6 online or hand it to your BLO. Attach a copy of your old voter ID and Aadhaar.
- Keep the acknowledgement number and follow up with your ERO’s office until your name appears on the roll.
What would change it
The rules already contain most of the fixes. A deletion needs a stated reason. Objections are meant to be verified and shared with parties. Uttar Pradesh showed that publishing every Form 7 online is possible, and that publication is what allowed reporters to find the gaps.
What is missing is enforcement and speed: notice to every voter before their name is removed, a verified identity for every objector, rejection of late or reasonless forms, and a fixed deadline to restore anyone wrongly deleted. Those decisions sit with the Election Commission, the state Chief Electoral Officers and the EROs who sign off on each name.
As of 14 October, Abid Ali was still waiting.
More stories beneath the headline in Third Eye.
Sources: ANI via LatestLY, 14 October 2026 · ETV Bharat · Counterview · The Reporters’ Collective, 9 October 2026 · The Tribune · All India Radio · Deccan Herald · The Week, 7 October 2026 · Organiser · Al Jazeera, 9 October 2026
