Maharashtra SIR Deletes Over 2 Crore Names; Study Flags Disparities Among Muslim Elec
Maharashtra SIR Deletes Over 2 Crore Names; Study Flags Disparities Among Muslim Electors
M.U.H
08/11/202621
NEW DELHI: Maharashtra’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls left 2.068 crore names off the 2026 draft electoral roll, accounting for 21.1 per cent of the 9.785 crore electors registered before the exercise, according to a preliminary report by the Sabar Institute.
Only 16.8 per cent of the deleted entries were recorded as belonging to people who had died. The remaining 1.720 crore entries, or about 83 per cent of the total, were classified as permanently shifted, untraceable or absent, or already enrolled elsewhere.
The report, titled SIR Maharashtra, was prepared by Sabir Ahamed, Ashin Chakraborty and Souptik Halder. It draws on the Election Commission of India’s lists of absent, shifted, dead and duplicate electors, pre-revision figures from the Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra, the 2024 Assembly election results and Census 2011 data. The analysis covers all 288 Assembly constituencies across 36 districts.
The scale of deletions was particularly high in Mumbai and surrounding areas. The city’s 36 Assembly constituencies account for 11 per cent of Maharashtra’s electorate but 17 per cent of all deleted entries. The overall deletion rate in these constituencies was 34.7 per cent, compared with 19.5 per cent in the rest of the state.
When deaths are excluded, the deletion rate in Mumbai stands at 30.1 per cent of the pre-revision electorate, against 16.1 per cent elsewhere. Thane district recorded a 35.4 per cent rate of non-death deletions, while Pune and Nagpur also recorded high figures.
The researchers compared the number of deleted entries with the results of the 2024 Assembly elections. They found that non-death deletions exceeded the winning margin in 190 of the state’s 288 constituencies. In 95 constituencies, the number of electors marked absent or untraceable alone was greater than the winning margin.
In Colaba, 1.19 lakh names were removed, compared with 1.18 lakh votes cast in the 2024 Assembly election. The number of deleted entries was therefore higher than the total votes polled in the constituency. The report also identifies 22 other constituencies across Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Pune where deletions amounted to between 75 and 100 per cent of the votes cast in 2024.
The researchers examined whether constituencies won by the ruling Mahayuti alliance or the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) experienced different rates of deletion. Although the unadjusted figures showed a higher rate of non-death deletions in MVA-held constituencies, the difference narrowed after accounting for Mumbai, region, reservation status, urbanisation and electorate size.
Following these adjustments, the difference between MVA and Mahayuti constituencies was just 0.27 percentage points, with the statistical analysis showing no clear alliance-based pattern.
The strongest association identified by the study was between lower voter turnout in the 2024 election and higher non-death deletion rates. The researchers recorded a Spearman correlation of minus 0.81 between turnout and deletions, indicating a strong relationship between lower turnout and higher rates of names being removed for reasons other than death.
Muslim-named Electors and Duplicate Entries
The report’s analysis of names classified as Muslim found that these electors accounted for 3,020,173 deletions, or 14.6 per cent of the total. This was higher than the 12.1 per cent share estimated by the researchers using district-level population figures from Census 2011.
The proportion varied across districts. Muslim-named electors accounted for 27.3 per cent of deletions in Aurangabad, 26.4 per cent in Parbhani and 24.6 per cent in Akola. Their share was 22.6 per cent in Mumbai. Across the state, the share of Muslim-named electors among deletions was 21.3 per cent in Mumbai and 13.2 per cent elsewhere.
A closer examination of the recorded reasons for deletion found a marked difference in the category of electors listed as already enrolled elsewhere. Among Muslim-named electors, 12.3 per cent of deletions fell into this category, compared with 7.9 per cent among other electors.
To account for differences in age and the distribution of communities across constituencies, the researchers compared electors belonging to the same ten-year age group and the same constituency. They found that Muslim-named electors had 2.07 times the odds of being classified as already enrolled elsewhere, compared with other electors in the same age group and constituency. The corresponding odds were 1.40 times higher for being marked untraceable or absent and 1.18 times higher for being classified as permanently shifted.
The report says the pattern remained almost unchanged under a stricter test requiring both the elector’s name and the name of a parent or spouse to be classified as Muslim. The higher proportion of Muslim-named electors classified as already enrolled elsewhere also appeared in 285 of the state’s 288 constituencies.
The researchers raise the possibility that name-based matching may have contributed to the higher rate of duplicate classification. Several Muslim surnames, including Shaikh, Khan, Sayyed and Pathan, are common across large numbers of electors. However, the Election Commission’s lists do not identify the other registration against which an elector was matched, making it impossible to test this explanation directly.
The report explicitly cautions that its findings do not establish that Muslim voters were deliberately targeted. It also stresses that religious identity was estimated through a name-based classification system developed by the institute, rather than through official Election Commission records. Since the Commission does not publish religion-wise electoral figures, the analysis cannot establish the actual rate of deletion among individual religious communities.
Shaikh was the most common surname among the deleted entries, accounting for 753,978 deletions, or 3.64 per cent of the total. The 50 most frequent surnames together accounted for 30.1 per cent of named deletions. The researchers caution that these figures reflect the frequency of surnames among deleted entries and cannot be interpreted as community-specific deletion rates.
Women and Third Gender Electors
The study found that women and men were removed from the electoral roll at broadly similar rates: 21.4 per cent of women and 21.2 per cent of men registered before the revision.
However, among living electors whose names were removed, women accounted for 49.8 per cent of deletions across the state. Outside Mumbai, the proportion rose to 51.2 per cent.
The report identifies a significant gender difference among younger electors marked as permanently shifted outside Mumbai. Of those aged 18 to 29 in this category, 822,798 were women and 379,991 were men — a ratio of 2.2 women for every man.
The researchers say this pattern is consistent with women moving to their husbands’ homes after marriage and being removed from the electoral roll at their parental addresses. They note that the final electoral roll will help establish how many subsequently registered at their new addresses.
Mumbai showed a different pattern. Among young electors marked as shifted, 85,167 were men and 76,848 were women. The report says this is consistent with migration among male workers in the city.
Third-gender electors experienced the highest rate of removal among the groups examined. Of the 6,101 third-gender electors on the 2024 roll, 3,250 — 53.3 per cent — were included in the deletion list. This was more than two-and-a-half times the statewide deletion rate of 21.1 per cent.
Only 3.7 per cent of deletions among third-gender electors were attributed to death, while 54.9 per cent were classified as untraceable or absent. Three-quarters of those removed were under 40.
The impact was particularly severe in some constituencies. In Malad West, 313 of the 345 third-gender electors on the 2024 roll were included in the deletion list. Bhiwandi West recorded 151 deletions among 158 third-gender electors.
The researchers also examined the relationship between urbanisation and non-death deletions. Their analysis found a strong association between the proportion of urban households in a district and the rate of such deletions, with a Pearson correlation of 0.94. The report says urbanisation explained district-level variation more closely than the religious or caste composition of the population.
It cautions, however, that these are area-level comparisons and cannot establish whether individual Muslim, Scheduled Caste or Buddhist electors were more or less likely to have their names removed.
The Sabar Institute describes the study as a preliminary analysis of names left off the SIR-2026 draft roll. Some electors whose names were removed may have reapplied and could appear on the final list. The researchers say the findings will need to be reassessed against the final electoral roll.
The report also notes that removal from an electoral roll does not, by itself, cancel a person’s citizenship or legal right to public services. However, electoral documents are sometimes used as proof of identity, residence or domicile, and deletion can create difficulties when people need to complete administrative procedures or access services.
The institute says it intends to download, make publicly available and analyse SIR deletion data from across India. It acknowledges, however, that the scale of the exercise exceeds the capacity of its small, independent and crowdfunded team.
