New Delhi: In many states of the country, a huge decline in the number of voters has been seen during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list. Wherever this process was implemented from Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan to Madhya Pradesh, the number of voters decreased by 6% to 14%. But amid this trend, Assam has surprised everyone.
Despite the purification of the voter list in Assam, the number of voters has not decreased, rather an increase of 1.35% has been recorded. The latest draft electoral roll data released by the Assam Election Commission has sparked a new debate in political circles. The question being raised is that when voters from SIR decreased in the rest of the country, what happened differently in Assam? Is this the effect of infiltration or is there some technical and legal reason behind it?
Voters increased in Assam, figures surprised
On Tuesday, the Chief Electoral Officer of Assam released the draft voter list. This time an increase of 1.35% has been recorded in the number of voters as compared to January 2025. According to the data, there are 1.25 crore male and 1.26 crore female voters in the state. This means that for the first time the number of women voters has exceeded that of men, which points towards the changing demography of Assam.
The special thing is that SIR was not done in Assam, rather only the voter list was checked and the names of fake or dead voters were removed.
When SIR is there in other states, then why not in Assam?
The biggest reason behind the increase in the number of voters in Assam is the difference in the process. Door-to-door verification was done under SIR in 12 states including Bihar and West Bengal. Names of doubtful, dead or transferred voters were strictly deleted.
But in Assam, ‘Special Revision’ was adopted in place of SIR, in which the rules and procedure remained different from other states.
Why did Assam get separate exemption?
The big reason behind this is NRC i.e. National Register of Citizens. The issue of citizenship in Assam is very sensitive and the process of NRC update is still going on under the supervision of the Supreme Court.
Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has already made it clear that there are separate provisions for Assam under the Citizenship Act and the process has been kept different here due to the supervision of the Supreme Court. This is the reason why while in other states names were removed on a large scale during SIR, the same decline was not seen in Assam.
Why are there more people joining and less people cutting?
The second major reason for the increase in voters in Assam is that the number of newly added voters was almost double the number of names removed. According to the Election Commission, between January 6 and December 27, 7.86 lakh new names were added, while 4.47 lakh names were removed.
In this way, overall a net increase of about 3.4 lakh voters was recorded.
The real story of those names which have not been removed yet
Although 4.47 lakh names were removed, the real picture pertains to those voters who have been identified but not yet removed from the list. Door-to-door verification by Block Level Officers (BLO) revealed that –
There are 4.79 lakh voters who have died.
5.24 lakh voters have shifted somewhere else
53,619 names are doubtful or duplicate
All of them together constitute about 4% of the current voter list, but their names still remain in the draft roll.
Then why were these names not deleted?
This is the biggest difference between Assam’s ‘Special Revision’ and the SIR process of other states. According to officials, these names have not yet been formally removed under the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
For these, formal objection will be awaited through Form 7. Until this process is completed, the names of dead or shifted voters may remain in the draft list. This is the reason why the number of voters seems to have increased in Assam, whereas in SIR states such names were directly removed.
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