Jean Drez's column: "The proportion of 'missing voters' varies from state to state.

The number of people aged 18 years or above in India is around 100 crore. How many of these people will have their names in the electoral roll after the completion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR)? A rough answer to this question can be given. The final electoral rolls of the SIRs of 13 large states have been released. According to the estimates of the National Commission on Population (NPC), the total number of people aged 18 years or above in these 13 states on March 1, 2026, was around 72 crore. On the other hand, the final voter list of the SIR of these states has the names of a total of 63.5 crore people. That is, about 88 percent of the adult population has their names in the final voter list and 12 percent are out of the adult list. If the same ratio is applied to the whole of India, it is estimated that the names of about 12 crore adults will not be in the final voter list of the SIR. We can call them "missing voters". Even if the final list includes some names which are duplicate or of deceased persons, then their number can be more than 12 crore. This does not mean that 12 crore people have been removed from the electoral rolls. There are also two categories of missing voters. The first category consists of those people whose names were earlier in the electoral rolls but were deleted during the SIR. We can call these "Removed Voters". Many of them will be migrant labourers, whose names were deleted from the electoral rolls of their old place of residence but not added to the list of new place of residence. The second category consists of those whose names were not in the electoral roll even before the start of the SIR and are not even in the final list. We can call them "left out voters". A large number of these left out voters are also young people whose names were never recorded in the electoral rolls. According to the Election Commission data, in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the names of at least 40 percent of the youth in the age group of 18 to 29 years were not in the voter list in 2024. It is very likely that the names of many of these young people are still out of the voter list. Why have the names of these young voters not been included during the SIR? The reason for this is that more attention was paid to the removal of names than to add the names of new voters to the SIR. In fact, in the first phase of all the SIRs, only the focus is on deletion of names. In this phase, the voter list is drafted. For this, the Booth Level Officer (BLO) removes the names of those whom they find absent, transferred, dead or double entrant. Only after the draft list is prepared, some of the left out voters get a chance to add their names. But by then the BLOs are very tired. They are so busy removing the so-called logical inconsistencies that they do not have the time or energy to go door-to-door to find the missing voters. The ratio of missing voters to the adult population is quite different from state to state. Such voters are very rarely visible in Kerala. There are 97 per cent of the estimated adult population in the final list of the SIR. In contrast, there is a huge gap of 17 per cent between the estimated adult population and the number of people recorded in the final electoral roll in Uttar Pradesh. The difference is about 2.8 crore people. How can elections be held in Uttar Pradesh? In Kerala, 97% of the estimated adult population has their names in the final list of the SIR. In contrast, there is a large gap of 17% between the estimated adult population in UP and the number of people recorded in the final electoral roll. (These are the author's own views)