SIR: Over 91% electors mapped, yet more than one crore deleted from draft rolls

Kodagu was consistently reporting the highest mapping percentage, with 98.67% completed as of mid-June, leaving only 1.33% of the electorate outside the mapping exercise | Photo Credit: ALLEN EGENUSE J. While 91.30% of the electors, including progeny, were mapped as per official data under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the deletions after the draft rolls went beyond 19%, making it unclear who the remaining voters were who were mapped but still deleted.Before the draft rolls were published, Karnataka had 5.54 crore voters. Of this, 5.06 crore voters, including progeny, were mapped, leaving 48.21 lakh electors unmapped. However, the deletions crossed 1.07 crore in the State. Officials gave different explanations, but none backed up the official figures.Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and other officials in Bengaluru said that voters who could not be mapped were given notices under ‘no mapping’. However, only 23.45 lakh notices were generated under ‘no mapping’, though the pre-enumeration mapping exercise had identified the figure to be nearly twice that number – 48.21 lakh.With only half of the unmapped voters being given notices, it raises another question: whether the pre-enumeration mapping data was used for issuing notices or the enumeration form details given by the people. Even civil society groups have been consistently asking that if enumeration form details were used, why was the mapping done, and why have people who filled the forms correctly still been flagged for notices?Officials argued that names deleted under Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others (ASDDO) have no connection to mapping, as mapping was just to collect the details and ease the process during the enumeration phase, while deletions resulted in cases where forms were not submitted back.However, among the ASDDO deletions, more than 15 lakh deletions marked as ‘absent’ happened simply because a person was not present when the enumeration form was given, though the elector is residing at the same place. So far, there is no explanation as to why the deletion happened if the mapping details were already present, as mapping was mostly the same as the enumeration process, where a person was mapped to self or progeny with the 2002 rolls.Moreover, the BLOs further defended that 91% only reflects the coverage of the mapping exercise, not the success of mapping. However, again in this case, official figures have not been given on how many were successfully mapped and how many could not.District-levelThe case is stark at the district level. Kodagu was consistently reporting the highest mapping percentage, with 98.67% completed as of mid-June, leaving only 1.33% of the electorate outside the mapping exercise. However, the district reported more than 13% deletion.Before deletions, 4.68 lakh electors were in the list, while 4.62 lakh electors, including progeny, were said to be mapped, leaving only 6,230 names outside mapping.Even if the ASDDO is kept aside, as officials argue there is no connection and only notices for ‘no mapping’ are considered, the number is more than 23,000, while the overall notices in the district have crossed 58,890.Although the official figure suggested the highest percentage of mapping in Kodagu, the BLOs, as reported by The Hindu, had consistently flagged the area as one of the most difficult to map because of the mobility of its tribal population. Many workers move within the district, depending on the plantation season, with the BLOs saying that in villages such as Kedamullur in Virajpet taluk, not even a single elector could be mapped.The trend is the same across districts, with no clarity on how initially a huge number of electors were able to map to the 2002 rolls but failed to do so in the enumeration forms. Published - September 13, 2026 07:42 pm IST