Gujarat SIR: Over 77 lakh names removed, state's voter count shrinks 13% to 4.4 crore

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The Election Commission on Tuesday released Gujarat's final electoral rolls after nearly three-and-a-half months of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive. The state's total voter count now stands at 4.40 crore with the deletion of almost 78 lakh names.

There has been an addition of 5.60 lakh voters in the final electoral rolls, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said. With addition of the names after the publication of the draft electoral rolls on December 19 last year, the final electoral rolls contain the names of 4,40,30,725 voters.

The sharp drop of 77.6 lakh names follows two phases of verification, beginning with the removal of 73.7 lakh names when draft rolls were issued last December after cross-checking death records, migration details and faulty registrations. Later, 3.9 lakh names were removed before the final rolls were put out.

As per reports, of the voters listed in the unrevised 2025 rolls, nearly 40 lakh had permanently relocated, 18 lakh were deceased, 9.8 lakh could not be traced to their registered addresses and about 3.8 lakh were identified as holding duplicate voter IDs.

The draft electoral rolls published by the EC on December 19 pegged the total count of electors at 4.34 crore as against the 5.08 crore earlier. It was challenged in the Gujarat High Court by two Congress leaders, who sought directions to ensure strict compliance with the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 during the SIR process.

Names of an additional 1.9 lakh voters were removed for other reasons. Based on objections and further verification after the draft rolls were published, another 3.9 lakh names were deleted from the rolls.

Ahmedabad recorded the highest number of voters in the state, with 49.1 lakh in the final electoral rolls, up from 48 lakh in the draft list. . Surat, which saw an addition of 1 lakh voters, witnessed the maximum deletions at 85,734 names.