New Delhi: Deletions in the draft electoral rolls of 15 Assembly constituencies across Hyderabad as a result of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exceed the 2023 winning margin in every constituency, according to an analysis by Kolkata-based public policy and research organisation, Sabar Institute. Seven of these constituencies were won by the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), seven by the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and one by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
According to a preliminary analysis published Tuesday, Muslim electors account for 40.7 percent of the 19,41,444 deletions recorded across Hyderabad. The share ranges from 12.1 percent in Secunderabad Cantonment to 85.9 percent in Bahadurpura. This spectrum, it says, “tracks the residential geography of the city, the old-city constituencies sitting at one end and the Secunderabad and western constituencies at the other”. The report uses the data for electors as per the electoral roll of January 2023 for comparison.
In two constituencies—Malakpet and Yakutpura—the deletions exceed the total votes polled in the 2023 elections. AIMIM won both these constituencies in 2023 by margins of 1.21 lakh and 1.54 lakh, respectively. In the other constituencies, the deletions ranged between 72.8 per cent to 97.9 percent of the votes polled.
The analysis is based on the draft electoral roll published in Telangana on 17 August. A total of 73.39 lakh voters have been deleted from the draft electoral roll, amounting to 21.3 percent of the electorate. Out of this, a major chunk—57.46 lakh or 16.99 percent—has been marked as permanently shifted or absent or others, 9.2 lakh or 2.73 percent has been marked as deceased and 6.7 lakhs or 1.98 percent has been marked as enrolled in multiple places.
Out of the 73.79 lakh deletions, Hyderabad alone saw 19.41 lakh deletions.
ECI officials familiar with the exercise pointed out that the SIR exercise in Telangana is ongoing, and only the draft voter roll has been published. The claims and objections period continues and eligible electors can still get themselves enrolled, they said. They also pointed out that the analysis is comparing the absolute number of voters in 2023 with the Absent, Shifted, Dead, and Duplicate (ASDD) figures or deletions after the SIR exercise, for which the number of electors were frozen on 12 May this year.
Officials further pointed out that several Booth Level Agents (BLAs) of various parties are involved in the exercise. In Telangana, during the enumeration phase, over 49,000 BLAs were appointed by various political parties to participate in the exercise.
Of religion and reasons
As for correlating the reasons for deletions with religion, the report says that permanent shifting of residence accounted for 73.0 percent of non-Muslim deletions, but 63.8 percent of Muslim ones. Untraceable or absent removals form 19.8 percent of Muslim deletions against 16 percent of non-Muslim ones, and prior enrolment elsewhere 7.6 percent of Muslim deletions against 3.4 percent non-Muslim ones. Death is recorded at 8.8 and 7.5 percent respectively.
“The deletions recorded against Muslim electors rest more often on the two weakest documentary grounds, untraceable or absent and already enrolled elsewhere, and less often on permanent shifting. That difference is visible both in the aggregate and constituency by constituency, where the untraceable share moves with the Muslim share across all 15,” the report says.
However, the report clarifies that the findings don’t prove that any group was targeted. “They are patterns in the composition of the deletions, measured without a religion-wise electorate to divide by, and a name-derived classification that leans towards over-inclusion,” it says.
Male factor
The report also looks at gender-wise deletions. It says that men form the majority of those removed in Hyderabad, “unusually so for an exercise of this kind”, while women form 47.8 per cent of the total deletions.
However, it adds that the female share of deletions is higher among Muslim deletions, at 49.5 percent against 46.7 percent among non-Muslims. On its findings comparing the deletions with the winning margin in the constituencies, the report says, “The comparison is not a claim that these electors would have voted, or how. It is a measure of scale—how large the revision is beside the electorate that decided the seat.”
The report explains that the religion data was derived from the elector’s names. However, it clarifies that since the constituency-level electorate has not been broken down by religion, it cannot say whether Muslim electors were deleted at a higher rate than others.
According to the analysis, age-group wise, the maximum deletions were faced by those in the 30-44 age range, with 8.47 lakh deletions, followed by 5.01 lakh deletions in the 45 to 59 age range, 2.55 lakh deletions in the 60 to 74 age range, 2.18 lakh deletions in the 18 to 29 age range, and 1.18 lakh deletions in the 75+ age range.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)