More than 7.3 million entries were removed from Telangana’s draft electoral rolls, while officials have completed only part of the verification process and the final scale of deletions remains uncertain.
The draft rolls, published on August 17, listed 26.49 million voters, down from 33.83 million the previous year. Another 9.29 million records required checks because data could not be matched or anomalies were identified. Authorities have cleared more than 7.24 million of those cases, or over 78%.
By October 7, the deadline for claims and objections, the office of Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudarshan Reddy had received 1.024 million applications under Forms 6, 6A, 7 and 8. Most sought corrections, with 505,159 filings. Another 494,687 sought inclusion in the rolls, while 24,323 Form 7 applications requested deletions.
Forms 6 and 6A are used to add voters, Form 7 covers people who have died or permanently moved, and Form 8 is for corrections. The Hindu reported that claims were still being processed. The rolls had been
The estimate that the final register could lose nearly seven million voters remains provisional. The newspaper based it on the number of draft deletions and inclusion applications received by the deadline. Hyderabad district recorded the highest number of claims.