16.18 lakh mysterious voters in UP, 12.92 lakh voters added beyond applications in SIR

Around 16.18 lakh voters’ details, which should have appeared on the Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer’s website, have been found to be missing even though the voters have already been added to the electoral roll, while Form 6 applications were filed for 71.38 lakh voters and the ECI reported a total of 84.3 lakh voters added during the SIR, according to The Reporters’ Collective.

The discrepancy has raised questions over the additional 12.92 lakh voters and how the number of voters added could exceed the number of publicly available applications.

The discrepancy has emerged from an independent analysis of Uttar Pradesh’s electoral-roll revision by The Reporters’ Collective, which examined the data released during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the country’s most populous state, where Assembly elections are due.

The investigation found that although the Election Commission received around 88 lakh Form 6 applications seeking inclusion in the electoral roll, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer’s website contains publicly accessible details of only 71.38 lakh applications.

According to the Collective’s analysis, the ECI added 84.3 lakh voters to the final electoral list, 12.92 lakh more than the applications whose details were made public, raising questions about how the number of voters added could exceed the number of publicly disclosed applications when Form 6 is the prescribed application for inclusion in the electoral roll.

An Election Commission press note on March 7 reportedly stated that 16.18 lakh people had applied for inclusion before the draft electoral roll was published on January 6, though no details of these applications could be located on the Uttar Pradesh CEO’s website, according to the report.

This is significant because the report says electoral authorities are required to make claims and objections publicly accessible, including individual application details without photographs, thereby allowing the electoral process to be independently scrutinised. Yet the identities, constituencies and verification trail of the 16.18 lakh applicants remain unavailable in the public records examined by the investigators.

The wider SIR figures add another layer to the controversy. Uttar Pradesh had 15.44 crore voters before the exercise began, while the draft roll published in January removed around 2.89 crore names, including voters classified as absent, shifted, deceased or duplicate. Subsequently, 84.3 lakh voters were included in the final roll.

The Reporters’ Collective said it sought clarification from Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa, but reported that he rejected the suggestion of a mismatch, saying there was no discrepancy in the Commission’s data and that the difference lay in the interpretation of the figures. The investigators, however, said they could not locate the details of the 16.18 lakh voters on the public portal.

Although 16.18 lakh represents a relatively small proportion of Uttar Pradesh’s 13.39 crore post-SIR electorate, the report noted that the distribution of these voters across constituencies and polling booths could be significant, making transparency over their inclusion particularly important ahead of the Assembly elections.