Karnataka’s voter list revision has exposed a difficult administrative problem: the electoral system can identify many voters who are no longer traceable at their recorded addresses, but may not be able to reliably establish whether they have moved permanently, remain registered elsewhere, or could later re-enter the rolls in another state. The issue has emerged after 75.53 lakh names were left out of the final electoral roll following the Special Intensive Revision process.
According to officials involved in the exercise, a large share of those excluded may be voters from outside Karnataka. The State Chief Electoral Officer’s office is also concerned that some of these voters could apply for fresh registration in Karnataka before elections, even after being removed from electoral rolls in another state. The report does not establish how many of the excluded voters fall into each category, but the scale of the unresolved cases points to a problem extending beyond routine list-cleaning.
The revision began with the draft electoral roll published on August 24. At that stage, 1.08 crore voters were classified under categories described as ASD(DO): voters who could not be traced, had permanently shifted, were deceased, were registered at more than one location, or had not signed the enumeration form. Of these, 16.39 lakh were classified as deceased and 7.09 lakh as registered in more than one place. Another 19.09 lakh were listed as untraceable and 65.45 lakh as permanently shifted.
The two largest categories—untraceable and permanently shifted—accounted for 84.46 lakh names in the draft list. Voters in these categories were required to apply for re-inclusion if they were genuine electors. Officials expected at least 80 lakh applications after the draft roll was published. Instead, applications for new registration, corrections and deletion totalled 26.23 lakh.
Only 10.08 lakh applications were accepted for inclusion in the final roll before the September 23 deadline. The Chief Electoral Officer’s office said 20.38 lakh applications had been processed, while the remaining applications were retained for a subsequent revision. A further 3.30 lakh applications were rejected and 2.55 lakh were kept on hold.
Officials estimated that about 75 lakh people had not submitted applications even after the revision process. They attributed roughly five lakh of these cases to a possible lack of information, leaving around 70 lakh voters who could not be traced through the process. That estimate is important because it separates two different administrative questions: whether citizens knew they had to respond, and whether the electoral machinery could establish where the remaining voters were located.
The officials cited several reasons for rejecting or holding applications. Some applications reportedly gave addresses where the voter could not be found or where no house existed. Others were submitted for people already registered in another state. The authorities said that, after checking documents and conducting house visits, they identified around 83,000 such applications among those filed for new registration.
This is where the revision moves from a list-verification exercise to an interstate governance problem. Officials said the enumeration stage had already revealed cases of voters registered outside Karnataka. Some voters were found to have Elector Photo Identity Card numbers in three or four states. However, technical limitations reportedly prevented the system from classifying all of them under the duplicate-registration category. Instead, some were placed in the untraceable or permanently shifted categories.
The distinction matters because each classification produces a different administrative response. A deceased voter should be removed permanently. A duplicate registration requires a mechanism to establish which registration is valid. A permanently shifted voter may need to update the place of registration. An untraceable voter may require further verification rather than automatic exclusion. When the system cannot distinguish between these situations, a single category can conceal several different realities.
The report attributes the concern about repeat registration to officials in the State Chief Electoral Officer’s office. Their apprehension is that a voter could cast a ballot in one state, have the entry removed there, and then apply for registration in Karnataka. The officials said the Election Commission currently has no system to track this entire sequence across states. If a voter’s name is deleted in one state and a new application is later submitted in another, the absence of an interoperable tracking mechanism could make the person’s movement difficult to follow.
That limitation also shows why electoral-roll accuracy cannot be treated only as a database-cleaning exercise. The roll is maintained through local verification, address records, applications, document checks and field visits, but voter mobility increasingly crosses municipal, district and state boundaries. A person who moves for work, education or family reasons may be absent during a verification visit without having abandoned voting rights. At the same time, a person registered at multiple locations can undermine the integrity of the roll if the duplication is not detected.
The Karnataka exercise therefore reveals a tension between inclusion and accuracy. Removing names that no longer correspond to a real residence can improve the reliability of the electoral roll. But excluding genuine voters who are temporarily away, unaware of the procedure or unable to respond within the deadline can create a different form of administrative failure. The figures in the report show that both concerns exist at scale, although the supplied information does not establish how many excluded voters are genuine residents, interstate migrants, duplicate registrants or deceased persons.
The process also places a substantial burden on citizens. Voters identified as untraceable or permanently shifted were expected to seek re-inclusion. That assumes they knew about the classification, understood the application process, possessed the required documents and could respond before the deadline. The gap between the expected 80 lakh applications and the 26.23 lakh applications actually received may reflect ineligibility in some cases, but officials also acknowledged that lack of information could explain a portion of the non-response.
The institutional responsibility is divided. Electoral-roll revision is conducted through the Election Commission’s machinery, while the accuracy of addresses and identity-related information may depend on local field verification and records that do not automatically move with citizens. The report points to a software capability that can identify some multiple registrations, but also to technical limits that prevent consistent classification. This suggests that the problem is not only one of fieldwork; it is also one of data architecture and coordination between state-level electoral systems.
The numbers illustrate the scale of the challenge. The draft process classified 1.08 crore voters into categories requiring scrutiny. Of the 84.46 lakh people identified as untraceable or permanently shifted, only 26.23 lakh applications were submitted for new registration, corrections or deletion. Just 10.08 lakh were added to the final list before the stated deadline. Even allowing for rejected, held and later applications, a large population remained outside the final roll without a clear public breakdown of its status.
The report’s central unresolved question is not simply who was removed, but whether the system can track a voter’s status when movement occurs between states. The current process appears capable of identifying an address mismatch or a possible duplicate, but less capable of following a person through deletion, relocation and fresh registration. That gap can affect both electoral integrity and citizens’ ability to remain enrolled.
The next stage will determine how many of the applications retained for future revision are accepted and whether voters excluded from the final list seek re-inclusion before elections. The State Chief Electoral Officer’s office will also face the larger task of distinguishing genuine interstate migration from duplicate registration and ensuring that the same voter cannot move between state rolls without a verifiable record. Until that mechanism is clearer, the 75.53 lakh exclusions remain less a settled result than a measure of how much the electoral system still does not know about voter mobility.
