Maharashtra SIR Cuts Fall Hardest on Urban Absentees

2,06,88,487 names did not make Maharashtra’s Special Intensive Revision draft roll published on August 31, 2026. That is 21.14% of the 9,78,54,049 voters on the previous list across 288 Assembly seats.

Chief Electoral Officer S. Chockalingam has said the figure is not a final cut. Eligible people have until September 30 to file Form 6, and 1.52 crore of the missing names were tagged only as absent or permanently shifted.

The 1.52 Crore the Officers Could Not Find

The draft keeps 7,71,65,562 voters, or 78.86% of the old roll: 3,95,89,905 men, 3,75,72,570 women and 3,087 third-gender electors. The 2,06,88,487 names left out sit in five official buckets from Chockalingam’s own breakup of uncollected house-to-house forms.

WHY NAMES MISSED THE DRAFT

Shifted and absent names together are 73.6% of everyone left off the draft. Dead and duplicate names, the cleanup everyone expected, are 52.44 lakh, or 25.3%. Chockalingam said about 17 lakh people had entries in more than one place, so striking a name in one seat does not always remove that person from the roll of India.

The people with the most to lose are not the recorded dead. They are the 1.52 crore voters a booth-level officer could not find, or was told had moved, during visits that ran from June 30 to August 17.

Thane, Mumbai and Pune Carry Almost Half the Cuts

Pune left 28,66,481 names off the draft, the largest absolute pile, just ahead of Thane at 28,59,377 and Mumbai Suburban at 26,58,202. Mumbai City added 9,50,720. Those four districts account for 93,34,780 names, 45.1% of the statewide cut, while holding about 27.5% of the old electorate.

WHERE THE DRAFT SHRANK FASTEST

Palghar, on the same urban belt, dropped 28.14%. Mumbai City and Suburban together are 36,08,922 names. Inside Thane, 17,07,393 electors were marked untraceable and 7,34,910 permanently shifted. Mumbai Suburban led the shifted bucket with 12,31,931 names; Pune recorded 5,90,614.

Hingoli left 8.82% of its old roll uncollected, Buldhana 9.10%, Ratnagiri 9.93% and Latur 10.62%. The house-to-house method worked where people still sleep at the address on the card. It failed in the districts that run on rent, shifts and weekly travel for work, which is also where anti-corruption activist Anjali Damania pointed to labourers, migrants and slumdwellers.

In Kalyan Rural, Almost Every Missing Name Is a Mover

Constituency files released with the draft show the same pattern at seat level. The high percentages now circulating are not the share of all voters wiped from a seat. They are the share of already excluded names that sit in the shifted or untraceable buckets rather than among the dead or the duplicates.

SEATS WHERE EXCLUDED NAMES ARE ALMOST ALL MOVERS

• Kalyan Rural: 2,38,789 excluded names tagged shifted or untraceable, 94.7% of that seat’s missing list.
• Ovala-Majiwada: 2,33,997 names, 93.3% of those left out.
• Nalasopara: 2,85,338 names, 93% of those left out.
• Twenty-five seats: more than 85% of excluded names in those two tags.
• Fifty-nine seats: combined share above 80%, and 82 seats above 75%.

A reading that treats Kalyan Rural as 95% emptied is a misread of the CEO tables. What those seats actually show is that almost nobody left off the draft there was coded as dead or double-counted. They were coded as people who had moved or could not be found, which is why the district-wise ASDD voter lists matter more than the statewide headline.

Why a Door-to-Door Hunt Misses Night-Shift Cities

Booth-level officers were told to visit an elector at least once and, if the person was not found, three times, after which the case was tagged. Chockalingam drew a line between “absent” and “shifted”: absent means the officer does not know what happened; shifted means there is information that the person has moved. Death entries rest on certificates or family reports.

There can be practical issues. In urban areas, for example, some people come home only after 7.30 or 8 pm. There is a huge population which is not available during the normal working hours. Our BLOs cannot necessarily work until 9 pm. Many of our BLOs are women, so there are practical limitations.

S. Chockalingam, Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra

He also said the August 31 roll is only a draft and that 100% accuracy is not claimed at this stage. Five officers were suspended after 3,400 enumeration forms turned up at a private photocopy shop in Kharghar, a reminder that the paper trail itself can break before any voter is found at the door.

Rahul Gandhi’s Question About Three Lists

Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi tied the draft to the 2024 Maharashtra cycle, saying 39 lakh voters were added between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls and calling that “vote theft.” He set three totals against each other: Lok Sabha 2024 at 9.29 crore, the Vidhan Sabha at 9.7 crore, and the SIR draft, which he put at 7.78 crore, and asked which list was correct. The published draft count is 7,71,65,562, a shade below his rounded 7.78 crore.

https://x.com/RahulGandhi/status/2094717593722753451

Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera put the same clash as a bind: either the 2024 rolls were clean, in which case the SIR has cut eligible people, or those rolls were not, in which case the government elected on them sits on a disputed list. NCP-SP leader Anish Gawande said Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region had 76 lakh names struck off, 35% of voters there against 17% in the rest of Maharashtra, and that in 237 of 288 seats the deletions exceed the 2024 winning margin.

Gawande’s seat sheet is sharpest in Thane’s mill and migrant wards. He put Bhiwandi East at 49.4% deletions with Muslims about 42.2% of the electorate, Bhiwandi West at 46.4% with about 42.8%, and Mumbra-Kalwa at 44% with about 38.7%. Those are Opposition readings of the CEO files, not a finding that religion was the coding rule. They sit on the same map as the night-shift problem Chockalingam described.

WHERE THE CLAIMS DIVERGE

• Gandhi: The 2024 jump of 39 lakh and the 2026 draft cut of 2.07 crore cannot both describe a clean roll, and he cites a Congress figure that 91% of struck-off names in West Bengal had to be put back after appeals.
• Chockalingam: The 2.07 crore figure is not the number of people who will be deleted; about 17 lakh are duplicates and about 34 lakh are dead, and the rest can still use claims.
• Gawande: The cuts bite first in Mumbai, the MMR and high-Muslim urban seats, far above the rest of the state.

Party booth-level agents already received the expected-deletion lists, so the live fight is not a secret purge so much as a race to file paper in wards where the officer never met the voter. Gandhi’s West Bengal 91% figure is his party’s tally; it is not a closed official score for Maharashtra, and the Maharashtra window is still open.

September 30 Is the Last Day for Form 6

An elector missing from the draft files Form 6, with a declaration and documents, for inclusion. Form 8 is for a correction. Form 7 is for an objection that someone else should come off. New voters who turn 18 on or before October 1, 2026, the qualifying date, use Form 6 as well. Applications can go in through Form 6 inclusion applications at the CEO’s site, at the electoral registration officer’s office, or on the national voter service portal. The Election Commission’s page on how to enrol as a voter still asks for proof of age and residence and a photograph. The voter helpline is 1950.

THE SIR CLOCK IN MAHARASHTRA

1. June 30, 2026: House-to-house collection of enumeration forms begins.
2. August 17, 2026: The uncollectable-form count is frozen after the extended visit window.
3. August 31, 2026: The draft roll for all 288 seats is published.
4. September 30, 2026: Last day for claims and objections.
5. October 1, 2026: Qualifying date for new 18-year-olds.
6. October 29, 2026: Notices and disposal of claims are to finish.
7. November 4, 2026: The final electoral roll is due.

A false statement on an inclusion, correction or deletion form can draw up to a year in prison under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. After the final roll, corrections can still run, under Sections 22 and 23 of the same Act, up to the last date for nominations in any election. The September 30 window is still the cheap, front-loaded chance for the 1.52 crore tagged only as missing or moved.

Bihar Showed How Draft Cuts Shrink

Maharashtra’s 2,06,88,487 is a draft-stage number in Phase 3 of a national revision that has already published draft cuts of 6.15 crore names from 36.08 crore electors, 17.04%, across the states that have printed lists. Delhi’s draft dropped 47,56,722 of 1,45,10,299 names, 32.78%. Maharashtra is the largest absolute cut in this phase, not the highest rate.

Bihar, the 2025 pilot, started with about 78.9 million electors. About 6.5 million names came off the draft, then 2.15 million eligible people came back through Form 6, and 3,66,000 more were removed before the final roll of about 74.2 million, a net cut of about 4.7 million, or 6%. A draft shock and a final roll are different documents, which is the only historical brake on reading August 31 as November 4.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The draft cut: 2,06,88,487 names, 21.14% of the old Maharashtra roll, published on August 31.
• The urban pile: 45.1% of those names sit in Pune, Thane, Mumbai Suburban and Mumbai City.
• The clock: Claims close on September 30; the final roll is listed for November 4.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• How many return: No public running tally yet shows how many of the 75.52 lakh absentees will file Form 6 in time.
• Who still lives there: Absent is not a finding that the person left Maharashtra, only that the officer did not meet them.
• The 2024 spike: Gandhi’s 39 lakh addition between the two 2024 polls is a political charge, not a number the CEO has matched to the SIR tags.

The names that will decide whether this draft becomes a smaller, cleaner roll or a smaller, thinner one are the people a BLO missed after 7.30 pm in Thane, Kalyan, Nalasopara and the Mumbai suburbs. They have until September 30 to put themselves back, and the final list is due on November 4.