Karnataka's final SIR roll leaves about 64.5 lakh eligible electors unaccounted for, and only one in three 18-19-year-olds enrolled. The Hindu's data desk has done the arithmetic; I want to do the audit. So I split the Chief Electoral Officer's own E-to-P figure by age, note that 78.2% of deletions rested on "shifted" and "absent" rather than dead or duplicate, and write to the Chief Election Commissioner with three requests: publish constituency-wise E-to-P with its population source and adult denominator, treat shifted and absent as two legal categories, and mechanise the enrolment of 18-19-year-olds.
The Hindu's data desk put its number on the table at 6.15 on the morning of 29 October: 64.5 lakh electors possibly missing from Karnataka's final roll, published on 27 October with 4,54,55,689 names, against the Chief Electoral Officer's own elector-to-population ratio of 66.11.
I have no appetite for re-fighting SIR politics. I want an audit of the arithmetic, because the arithmetic has a hole in it that no panel on television has pointed at.
That 66.11 divides electors by everybody — 6.89 crore people, children included. Jean Drèze, in the same report, notes that roughly 75% of Karnataka's 2026 population is adult. So the ratio is not 66 voters for every 100 who could vote. It is 66 for every 100 people of any age, and the distance between 66 and 75 is the size of the question.
Split it by age and the question sharpens. Of an estimated 20.66 lakh people aged 18 and 19, the final roll holds 6.83 lakh — 33.1%, one in three. In the 20-29 band it is 77.9%. The loss is concentrated at the entry gate, not spread across the electorate.
Then ask why names left. Of 1.08 crore deletions, 23.5 lakh (21.8%) were dead or duplicate, grounds nobody sensible disputes. The remaining 78.2% were marked shifted or absent. Against all that, 716 foreign nationals were found on the rolls — 0.007% of deletions. And of 361 district-level appeals against deletion, nine had been heard by 21 October.
On 28 October the Supreme Court found the same fault line. It asked the Election Commission why a person who was on the 2026 roll, deleted only because the enumeration form never reached her, must now file Form 6 — the form in which a first-time voter declares she has never voted before (LiveLaw, 28 October). Justice Bagchi called it a structural incongruity. Karnataka's 78.2% rests on the same slippage: nobody answering a door was recorded as a finding about a person, when it is only a fact about a doorbell.
I have fretted about this plumbing before — in May 2023, that a census app tied to birth records could enrol a citizen the day she turns 18, and in June 2025, on linking the rolls to the birth and death register.
Which brings me to a short letter.
Dear Chief Election Commissioner,
Three requests, all about publication rather than policy.
- With every future roll, publish constituency-wise E-to-P, naming the population source and placing the adult-share denominator beside the headline ratio. A ratio without its denominator is not transparency; it is decoration.
- Treat "shifted" and "absent" as two legal categories, not one clerical convenience. Shifted has a form — Form 8, at the new address. Absent has questions: absent from where, on what date, verified by whom?
- Mechanise enrolment of 18-19-year-olds. Seed the roll from board examination registers and DigiLocker, let a student opt in when her Class 12 marks are issued, and dispose of Form 6 within seven days.
None of these needs a new Act. Two need a table in a PDF; the third needs a deadline. I would settle for that.
With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
29 Oct 2026
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