UP CEO’s rebuttal ends up confirming 85,854 voter deletion forms lacked reasons

Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa has acknowledged that 85,854 voter deletion forms generated during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) contained no reasons for removing names, according to an investigation by The Reporters Collective.

The news organisation said Rinwa dismissed its findings as inaccurate in a post on X on October 9 before releasing a video defending the revision exercise. However, it maintained that his explanation confirmed the absence of reasons on the forms. Some reportedly contained only single letters in the relevant field.

Election rules require authorities to record grounds for deleting voters and issue written orders explaining such decisions. The Collective said Rinwa did not clarify why the forms lacked this information.

The report also documented more than 200 attempts to remove Muslim voters in bulk. Rinwa said complaints involving multiple Form 7 submissions covered around 4,700 names among Uttar Pradesh’s 13.39 crore voters. He maintained that affected voters received notices citing unmapped records or discrepancies, but did not provide figures for either category, the report said.

The Collective had previously reported that application details for 16.18 lakh newly enrolled voters were missing from the CEO’s website. Meanwhile, the Election Commission restricted individuals to 30 voter-deletion objections a month, revising its SIR procedure ahead of Uttar Pradesh’s Assembly elections expected in February-March.