It has been a year since the Special Intensity Revision conducted by the Election Commission of India started. In these one year, through SIR, the names of about 6 crore people in 13 states of the country have been removed from the voter list. The troubles of those whose names have been removed from the SIR have increased. UP, Bihar and West Bengal are the big states where maximum cuts were made. Because of this, names of lakhs of people in Bihar have been removed from the ration list. In West Bengal, someone’s passport has been stopped due to his name appearing in the voter list. Let us understand in detail how many people’s names have been removed from SIR in which state and what problems people are facing.
Last year, before the Bihar Assembly elections, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) campaign was started on June 24. After this process, names of people on a large scale were removed from the voter list in Bihar. The opposition and social activists alleged that a large number of people were denied the right to vote citing lack of necessary documents. After this, when these people approached the Supreme Court, in March 2026, the Supreme Court accepted this process of the Election Commission as constitutionally correct.
65 lakh names deleted in Bihar
According to the data, in the first phase, names of 65 lakh voters in Bihar were removed from the voter list. The result was that not only in Bihar but also in West Bengal, complaints of people whose names were struck off being excluded from some government schemes and social security benefits came to the fore. In the second phase of SIR, voter lists were reviewed in 12 states and union territories including Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Kerala, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. During this period, a total of 5.18 crore names were removed, due to which the number of voters reduced from 50.99 crore to 45.81 crore. Among the removed names, there were 66.88 lakh voters who had died. Of these, maximum 25.47 lakh names were removed from Uttar Pradesh and 24.16 lakh names were removed from West Bengal.
At the same time, the third phase of SIR was launched on May 14, covering 36.73 crore voters in 16 states and three union territories of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana and Uttarakhand, and National Capital Territory of Delhi, Chandigarh and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Will be completed by the end of this year.
| State/Phase | Names removed from voter list | Key reasons/data |
problems encountered
|
| Bihar (1st phase) | 65 lakhs | Lack of documents, duplicate entries, migration etc. |
Question on voting rights, effect of cancellation of ration card later
|
| Uttar Pradesh | 25.47 lakh | Dead Voters, Duplicates and Transfers |
Reduction in voter list on a large scale
|
| West Bengal | 24.16 lakh | Record Matching and SIR Review |
Complaints about problems in passport verification and government benefits
|
| Other 9 states and union territories | about 4.29 crores | Dead, duplicate, migration and ineligibility |
Complaints and objections in various states
|
| Total (1st + 2nd Stage) | about 5.83 crores | These include 66.88 lakh dead voters. |
Names removed on a large scale across the country
|
5.5 lakh ration cards canceled in Bihar
Bihar has removed the names of more than 5.5 lakh ration card holders under Special Intensive Revision (SIR) after matching records with the voter list and income verification on the orders of the Centre. There are a total of 1.79 crore ration card holders in the state, out of which this is about 3%. During the review, more than 8.19 lakh cards came under scrutiny. According to the government, the main reasons for removing the name were death, migration, duplicate entry, not updating KYC and being ineligible as per income criteria. Officials say that this is part of a bigger clean-up campaign, so that the benefits of welfare schemes reach only the eligible people.
Name missing from voter list, passport stuck
Former Telegraph editor R. Rajagopal says that during a special intensive vetting process this year, his name was removed from the voter list of Ballygunge assembly constituency of Kolkata. Officials argued that his and his late father’s names were not found in the voter list of 2002. After this, the process of his passport renewal also got stuck, because during police verification, an adverse report was sent on the basis of name not being in the voter list.
According to Rajagopal, due to this he could not attend his daughter’s wedding in America, even though he had a valid American visa. Now he has to collect decades old documents of himself and his family so that they can prove their identity and records. R. Rajagopal says that if a former editor and a person associated with journalism for a long time can face such problems, then it can be imagined how difficult the situation of the poor and marginalized people of the society will be.
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