Maharashtra SIR: Over 2 crore voter enumeration forms remain uncollected

Maharashtra’s electoral roll revision has raised concerns after more than2.07 crore enumeration forms remained uncollectedduring the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. The figure accounts for more than one-fifth of Maharashtra’s nearly9.8 crore registered voters, putting the spotlight on the scale of the verification exercise ahead of the publication of the draft electoral roll.

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The Election Commission’s SIR exercise involves door-to-door verification of voters through Booth Level Officers (BLOs). The exercise is aimed at updating the electoral rolls and identifying entries that may require verification, including voters who have shifted residence, are deceased, are unavailable during verification or have duplicate entries.

Mumbai, Thane and Pune account for nearly half

The largest concentration of uncollected forms is in Maharashtra’s major urban centres. Thane, Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban and Pune together account for 94.47 lakh uncollected forms — around 45.4 per cent of the state’s total. The numbers are particularly significant because these districts include some of Maharashtra’s most densely populated and highly mobile urban areas, where migration and changes of residence can make voter verification more challenging.

Mumbai alone had around 30 lakh voters reported as untracedearlier during the SIR exercise.

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The situation is not limited to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. In Nagpur district, around 13.36 lakh voterswere in the uncollectable category. Across the wider Nagpur division, the figure stood at around34.96 lakh voters. The term “uncollectable” does not automatically mean that these voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls. Election authorities are required to follow the prescribed verification process, while eligible voters will have an opportunity to raise claims and objections if their names are missing from the draft roll.

MAHARASHTRA SIR

2.07 CRORE
Enumeration Forms Uncollected

94.47 LAKH
Thane + Mumbai City + Mumbai Suburban + Pune

45.4%
Share of Total Uncollected Forms

~30 LAKH
Untraced Voters in Mumbai

13.36 LAKH
Uncollectable Voters in Nagpur District

34.96 LAKH
Uncollectable Voters in Nagpur Division

What happens next?

The draft electoral roll is scheduled to be published on August 24. This will be followed by a claims and objections period, allowing voters to check their names and details and approach election officials if they believe they have been wrongly excluded or if corrections are required.

The final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on October 27.

The scale of the uncollected forms has now made the next stage of the exercise particularly important. While the Election Commission seeks to clean up electoral rolls by identifying outdated, duplicate or incorrect entries, the process will also have to ensure that eligible voters are not inadvertently left out.

For Maharashtra, the concentration of nearly half of the uncollected forms in Thane, Mumbai and Punemakes urban voter verification one of the key challenges in the ongoing electoral roll revision.