Nearly 30 lakh voters listed in electoral rolls used for local body elections in Rajasthan are absent from the election commission’s final voter list following the Special intensive revision (SIR) exercise, a civil rights activist has alleged.According to news agency PTI, the discrepancy reportedly exists between the election commission’s final SIR electoral roll and the voter lists maintained by the Rajasthan state election commission (SEC) for urban local body and panchayat elections.The SEC has attributed the difference to its continued use of the pre-SIR electoral roll, explaining that preparations for local elections had started well before the revision exercise was completed.According to Rajasthan’s final SIR electoral roll, published in February 2026, the state’s electorate declined from 5.47 crore to 5.15 crore. The revision resulted in the deletion of 44.28 lakh names and the addition of 12.91 lakh new voters.However, the SEC’s electoral rolls covering the same 199 Assembly constituencies continued to carry approximately 5.45 crore names, creating a difference of nearly 30 lakh voters.SEC secretary Rajesh Verma said the commission had adopted the Election Commission’s pre-SIR electoral roll, which was last updated on January 1, 2025, as the basis for preparing voter lists for local elections.He added that the SEC traditionally relies on election commission electoral rolls updated through the annual special summary revision process for local body polls.Chief electoral officer Naveen Mahajan also confirmed that the SEC had used the pre-SIR list. He said no objections had been received in Rajasthan against the final SIR electoral roll.
Activist questions use of outdated voter lists
Nikhil Dey, rights activist and founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, questioned the SEC’s decision to continue using the older electoral roll despite the availability of the revised list.
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Dey argued that electoral rolls undergo regular updates and that the state election commission could have adopted the election commission’s final SIR list instead.He also sought clarification on why the SEC considered its older voter list more reliable than the election commission’s final version.Raising concerns over the apparent inconsistency, Dey questioned how booth-level officers could mark individuals as deceased in one electoral roll while their names continued to appear in another.A comparative analysis conducted by Dey found that 26.63 lakh voters whose names were removed during the SIR exercise were still listed in the SEC’s 2026 electoral rolls for urban local body and panchayat elections.
