Karnataka SIR: 64.5 lakh voters potentially missing in rolls, majority of them young

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The 18 to 29 age group accounted for the majority of those missing, calculations showed. File | Photo Credit: Allen Egenuse. J

Around 64.5 lakh electors are potentially missing from the final electoral rolls of Karnataka released after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise on Tuesday (October 27, 2026), based on the Elector-to-Population (E-to-P) ratio of 66.11 released by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).

The State’s E-to-P ratio quoted in the CEO’s statements was calculated as the ratio between the total number of electors on the rolls and the estimated population in 2026 in all age groups, including those below 18 years of age and not eligible to vote.

The 18 to 29 age group accounted for the majority of those missing, calculations further showed. Of the 64.5 lakh potentially missing, 38.41 lakh (59.5%) are in the 18-29 age group.

The statements of CEO cited the 2020 Report of the Technical Group on Population Projections, constituted by the National Commission on Population, and widely used by various government agencies, for the population estimates.

The Hindu used the estimated population for different age groups from the same report to estimate the potential number of electors missing from the rolls. As per the report, the estimated population in Karnataka as of March 1, 2026 should be around 6.89 crore, of which the population eligible to vote should be 5.19 crore.

If all eligible voters had been included, the total in the rolls would have been roughly 5.19 crore. However, the final rolls released on Tuesday had only 4,54,55,689 electors (excluding Service Electors), which is a shortfall of about 64.5 lakh voters.

Karnataka had 5.54 crore electors on its rolls before the SIR commenced, which was above the estimated population in the 18+ age group, indicating that the rolls required removal of redundant entries, mainly duplicated and deceased voters. However, of the 1.08 crore names deleted during the enumeration phase of the SIR, only 23.5 lakh (21.8%) were deleted as duplicates and deceased, while the remaining 78.2% were deleted with shifted or absent marked as reasons. Only a modest 8.2 lakh net additions were made during the Claims and Objections phase.

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Age-group wise analysis showed that under-enrolment was disproportionately high in the age group of 18 to 29, while the gap narrowed gradually in the older age groups.

Among first-time electors aged 18 and 19, only a meagre 33.1%, or just one-third of their estimated population have been enrolled. As per the 2020 report, the estimated population in the 18 and 19 age group in 2026 is 20.66 lakh. However, there are only 6.83 lakh electors in this age group as per the data released by the CEO. Similarly, the estimated population of those in the 20 to 29 age group is 1.11 crore, but the electoral rolls had only 86.56 lakh voters (77.9%). As the chart below shows, 13.83 lakh first-time electors and 24.58 lakh in the 20 to 29 age-group seem to be left out from the electoral rolls.

Gender-wise analysis showed that while under-enrolment was high among women in the 18 to 29 age group, the trend reversed in those aged 30 or above. More men than women were deleted during the SIR in Karnataka was also evident from the fact that the gender ratio in the electoral rolls went up from 1,007 women for every 1,000 men in January 2025 to 1,017 in the final SIR rolls.

As the table below shows, in the age group of 50 and above, the enrolment was closer to their estimated population. In two groups — women in the 60 to 69 age group and men in the 70 to 79 age group — there were more electors than the estimated population.

Assembly constituency-wise E-to-P ratio released by the Karnataka CEO showed 13 constituencies with an abysmally low ratio of less than 50. Majority of them were in and around Bengaluru. B.T.M Layout had the lowest of just 39.23. Its electoral rolls shrunk by more than 50% from 2.82 lakh to 1.41 lakh.

Economist Jean Dreze said that the E-to-P ratio of 66.11 in the final SIR list is way below 75%, which is the estimated share of adults in the population of Karnataka in 2026. “No matter how we look at the figures, there is evidently a huge gap between the projected adult population and the size of the final list. The gap is too big to be explained by inaccuracies in population projections,” he said.

“The conclusion is inescapable: large numbers have either been unfairly deleted from the pre-SIR list, or left out of both pre-SIR and final lists. It is the same story state after state,” he added.

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