UP's SIR: Voter list flooded with 'logical discrepancies' days before draft roll, BLOs say

Even as the Opposition goes hammer and tongs against the Election Commission (EC) over its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a troubling detail has emerged from Uttar Pradesh.

Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and election officials told The Federal that just days before December 26, when the draft roll was originally due, their apps were flooded with "huge lists" of voters flagged for "logical discrepancies" with no clear explanation.

"Several voters we had personally verified through house visits or phone calls were flagged, and we didn't know why. We all panicked because these lists kept coming around December 20 and we had no time to identify or address the discrepancies," said a BLO from Malihabad, who asked not to be named.

Other BLOs and civil rights activists in UP echoed this, saying software-generated inconsistencies, and the lack of clarity on how to identify and correct them, left the exercise mired in confusion. With the state going to the polls in early 2027, there are deep concerns about the "purified" voter list. Frequently changing directions, IT-induced "logical discrepancies", excessive workload and an unclear verification process marred the SIR, election officials and civil society groups said.

An exercise fraught with flaws

UP was among the 12 states and Union Territories where Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar announced the second phase of SIR last year.

The scale in UP was staggering. The draft roll, finally published on January 6, showed the voter count plummeting to 12.56 crore from 15.44 crore just 10 weeks earlier. The final roll, released on April 10, added back 84.28 lakh voters to reach 13,39,84,792, but the net deletion remained substantial.

"The exercise was riddled with systemic flaws. The software and the pressure on BLOs to finish within a narrow window ensured people were deleted arbitrarily," said Shekhar Dixit, president of the Indian People's Front.

Also read: SIR explained: From voter deletions to Form 6, what has changed?

Dixit and his neighbour, a retired civil servant, both found their names missing from the draft list. Their cases were not anomalies. Deletions were large-scale in several districts, including Lucknow, where nearly three lakh voters were struck off.

Software-generated errors

"In early December, when the exercise had just begun, there was great confusion over which documents to ask for, as many voters turned up with voter IDs and ration cards. Some even submitted blank forms with thumb impressions and signatures. Even we weren't sure what to fill in, especially when tracing details back to the 2003 rolls," the Malihabad BLO said.

Also read: EC’s SIR relief bypasses 22 lakh Bengal voters trapped in tribunal backlog

As BLOs across the state began raising concerns about the process's "opaqueness" and the lack of instructions on handling system-generated discrepancies, the UP Chief Electoral Officer held a statewide virtual meeting and issued fresh instructions to district- and assembly-level officials. Officials say the meeting brought some clarity but did little to smooth the process. The first few days after the lists appeared went into working out how the newly identified "suspect voters" were to be verified.

"The list was too long, and we had to figure out ourselves why each voter was flagged. That made it even more tedious," the BLO added.

Also read: SIR Form-7 row: Transparency under scanner amid community targeting allegations

The mounting pressure also began to take a toll on BLOs' physical and mental health. Many resigned, and suicides among field-level officials shook the state. Caught in a political storm as the Opposition stepped up the pressure, the EC announced a deadline extension.

A huge list and a tall task

Officials, however, told The Federal that it was too little, too late.

“We tried our best but it was too much for us. We prioritised the cases where the voters themselves turned up with the notices. That number in itself was too huge and it was exhausting. As women, many of us started facing pressure from our families also,” a Shiksha Mitra (teaching assistant) and BLO from Lucknow said.

There is a concern that the entire drill was executed in such a way that despite huge efforts, errors were bound to creep in. The female BLO demurred on this. “We tried to correct most of these issues after the first draft roll was published and the correction window was announced,” she said.

Also read: EC dissent row: How Bengal’s SIR concerns went unheeded

The EC provided a three-month window to those whose names were flagged for inconsistencies in the draft roll, to seek inclusion through Form 6. Election officials had to dispose of all the applications by March 27.

The final SIR data released on April 10 showed that notices had been issued to 2.22 crore voters flagged for logical discrepancies. Another 1.04 crore voters were classified as unmapped. The latter category referred to voters whose parents or grandparents featured in the 2003 electoral roll, the baseline used for the revision, but whose own names were missing from the revised list.

Curious case of ‘logical discrepancies’

The lists of people deemed as “suspect voters” triggered panic and confusion among the officials. The situation soon descended into pandemonium after voters started turning up at the offices and houses of the BLOs, demanding answers to why they were excluded despite providing all the documents.

The software flagged, among other things, cases involving unusual age gaps between parents and children. In many cases, predominantly in Dalit households, where the newer generation did not use surnames as they didn’t want to be identified by their surnames, the voters were deemed as “suspect voters”.

Also read: Amid row, EC restores regular Form 6 process outside states undergoing SIR

“There were many families where parents used surnames like Rawat and Kannaujia, but their children dropped those surnames. Their matriculation certification had either Kumar or Kumari as the surname. So, they were categorised under ‘logical discrepancies’,” a BLO from the Mohanlalganj assembly constituency in Lucknow told The Federal.

Family size ‘standardised’

Another bizarre reason for flagging voters as logically inconsistent is the family size, which the software tends to standardise at seven. “If the family size is seven, it means two parents and five children. If there are more children, the ‘additional voters’ are automatically treated as ‘suspect’ by the system. This mostly affected Muslim families,” the BLO added.

Some discrepancies also crept into the rolls as the mounting pressure and lack of awareness among the field workers resulted in empty forms with just signatures and thumb impressions. Such forms began to flood in, and were later filled by BLOs using existing records. In many, the information entered was later found to be inconsistent with the previously available data.

“This was widespread problem across the state, our research has found out. Even my relative named Vishawajeet faced the brunt of it. His name was struck off, and when he filed Form 6, the BLO himself didn’t know what details to fill. They declared a neighbour of a different caste as his uncle (chacha). Consequently, his name was struck off from the final roll due to logical discrepancy,” Seema Azad, president of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), told The Federal.

The course correction

As the scale of deletions in the draft roll turned the SIR into a political flashpoint, with the Samajwadi Party, Congress and other Opposition parties questioning the sharp fall in voter numbers, the EC went for course correction. It issued notices to 2.22 crore voters who were flagged for logical discrepancies and about 1.04 crore classified as unmapped. These voters were allowed a three-month window, from January 6 to March 6, to submit documents and appear for verification.

Also read: Kharge demands CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s removal over SIR, seeks PM Modi’s resignation

The EC also introduced a ‘Book-a-Call with a BLO’ facility and special campaign days at polling stations. “We tried to correct most of these issues after the first draft roll was published and the correction window was announced subsequently,” the Lucknow BLO said.

By April 10, the EC said 84.28 lakh voters had been added back to the rolls. Yet the final electorate remained at 13.39 crore. The overall voter count was still about 2.05 crore fewer than the 15.44 crore voters on the roll before the SIR.

While the exercise was eventually completed after additional verification and extensions, many are still turning up to seek inclusion as new voters. “Many may not even be aware of being excluded and would only come to realise during the elections when they fail to find their names in the list,” said Allahabad-based human rights activist Chittajit Mitra.

Coming soon: Why UP SIR hit women, migrant workers and displaced citizens the most