‘97 lakh voters deleted in TN’: Stalin urges President to intervene in SIR irregularities

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president and former Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin urged President Droupadi Murmu to initiate parliamentary action against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. He also urged the President to seek the Supreme Court’s opinion on the deletion of 97,37,832 electors from Tamil Nadu’s voter lists. Stalin also called for the restoration of the pre-SIR electoral rolls, an independent forensic audit of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) digital voter databases, and measures to restore public confidence in elections, including a return to paper ballots.In a memorandum dated October 26, Stalin requested the President to send a message to both Houses of Parliament under Article 86(2) of the Constitution (Right of President to address and send messages to Houses), seeking consideration of action against Gyanesh Kumar, and to refer questions concerning the validity of the voter deletions and the functioning of the Election Commission to the Supreme Court under Article 143 (Power of President to consult Supreme Court).The memorandum, submitted on behalf of the DMK, contains nine demands, including the cancellation of the SIR across all states, an independent audit of the ECI’s digital systems, the preservation of official records relating to the revision exercise, and the counting of 100% of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips pending a shift to paper ballots.Stalin alleged that the SIR exercise had resulted in the exclusion of genuine voters and that the deletions had disproportionately affected constituencies where the DMK had a strong support base. He also accused Gyanesh Kumar of taking unilateral decisions in the name of the Election Commission, overriding the recorded objections of the other two Election Commissioners.“The right to vote is the foundation on which every other institution of our Republic rests,” Stalin wrote, arguing that Articles 326 (Elections to the House of the People and to the Legislative Assemblies of states to be on the basis of adult suffrage) and 324 (Superintendence, direction and control of elections to be vested in an Election Commission) of the Constitution.The memorandum described the SIR as an exercise that was “tainted from its inception to its conclusion” and alleged that the scale and manner of the deletions weakened one political party while strengthening another. According to the Times of India, Stalin sent the memorandum by email after a DMK delegation was unable to secure a meeting with the President.Stalin’s allegations about voter deletions in Tamil NaduA major part of the memorandum concerns the scale of voter deletions during the SIR in Tamil Nadu.According to figures cited by Stalin from the website of the Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer, the state had 6,41,14,587 registered electors before the SIR, as of October 27, 2025. The draft electoral roll published on December 19, 2025, contained 5,43,76,755 electors, representing a reduction of 97,37,832 names, or 15.19% of the pre-SIR electorate.The final electoral roll published on February 23, contained 5,67,07,380 electors, which was 74,07,207 lower than the pre-SIR figure. The roll used for the election on April 7, contained 5,73,43,291 electors, which was 67,71,296 fewer than the pre-SIR electorate.Stalin said nearly one in every six electors had been removed from the draft roll during an exercise conducted over approximately six weeks, between November 4 and December 14, 2025.Even after the claims-and-objections process, he said, the final roll remained 74.07 lakh electors below the original count. This amounted to an average net reduction of approximately 31,655 electors per Assembly constituency across Tamil Nadu’s 234 constituencies.The DMK leader alleged that many of those deleted were long-standing residents who had lived at the same addresses for years and had voted in previous elections. He said they had been marked as “absent” or “shifted” based on an enumeration conducted during the northeast monsoon, without the individual notice and hearing he said were required under law.Stalin also argued that the DMK had opposed the SIR from the outset. He referred to his participation in the Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar in July 2025, following reports of large-scale voter deletions ahead of the Assembly election there.After the ECI announced the extension of the SIR to 12 states including Tamil Nadu on October 27, 2025, the DMK convened an all-party meeting in Chennai on November 2. The meeting resolved that the exercise should not be undertaken without addressing the problems identified in Bihar, and that the parties would approach the Supreme Court. The Secular Progressive Alliance subsequently held a state-wide protest on November 11, 2025.The memorandum also said that the deletions may have affected the outcome of the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly election.According to the figures in the memorandum, the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which formed the government after its first Assembly election, won 108 seats. The DMK won 59, the AIADMK 47, and other parties 20.The analysis, as cited by Stalin, showed that in 99 constituencies where fewer than 20,000 electors had been deleted, the TVK won 24 seats. In 69 constituencies where more than 30,000 electors had been deleted, TVK won 52 seats. In the 10 constituencies with more than 80,000 deletions, the TVK won all 10 seats, while the DMK did not win any.Stalin also cited the analysis to argue that constituencies won by the DMK in the 2021 Assembly election had experienced an average of approximately 31,000 deletions each, compared with around 27,000 in constituencies won by the AIADMK.He said the pattern raised questions about whether the deletions had disproportionately affected the DMK’s electoral prospects. The memorandum alleged that the deletions were concentrated in a manner that weakened the DMK and benefited the TVK. The figures cited by Stalin do not, by themselves, establish that the SIR caused the election results.The memorandum also listed constituencies where the number of electors deleted exceeded the victory margin. Among the examples cited are Tiruppattur, where the TVK won by one vote; Kanniyakumari, where the AIADMK won by 214 votes; Polur, where the TVK won by 227 votes; Tirukkoyilur, where the DMDK won by 285 votes; and Paramathi-Velur, where the AIADMK won by 308 votes.Stalin cited his Kolathur constituency as another example. He said 1,03,812 registered voters had been deleted from the constituency by December 2025. In the 2021 election, he had won Kolathur with 1,05,522 votes and a margin of 70,384 votes. In the 2026 election, he secured 74,202 votes, while the winning candidate secured 82,997, leaving a margin of 8,795 votes.Stalin alleged that the deletions had tilted the result in favour of the TVK. The DMK’s memorandum called for the Supreme Court to examine the constituency-wise and booth-wise pattern of deletions and their correlation with the 2026 election results.Allegations against the Chief Election CommissionerStalin’s memorandum also questioned the manner in which decisions have been taken within the Election Commission.Citing an investigation published by The Indian Express on September 23, Stalin said Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected in writing on at least 14 occasions between October 2025 and August 2026 to decisions and orders issued in the name of the Commission without their knowledge or approval.According to the memorandum, the objections concerned issues including official communications issued without the Commission’s approval, changes to voter registration forms, the centralisation of electoral roll databases, the redistribution of work within the ECI without the Commissioners’ knowledge, and restrictions on officials’ access to the ECI’s digital systems.Stalin cited a written objection in which an Election Commissioner reportedly described an action as “unauthorised and illegal”. He argued that decisions taken against the recorded opinions of two of the three Commissioners violated Section 18 of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023.Section 18 provides that the Commission’s business should, as far as possible, be transacted unanimously and that disagreements should be decided by majority opinion. Stalin argued that the CEC could not override the other two Commissioners.He also questioned the basis on which the nationwide SIR was authorised. The memorandum cited responses to Right to Information (RTI) applications in which the ECI reportedly said that no information was available about a decision to initiate a nationwide SIR, and that the Commission had not taken such a decision. Stalin said this conflicted with the ECI’s subsequent assertion that the order authorising the exercise had received unanimous approval.The memorandum further raised concerns about changes to Form 6, used by people applying to be registered as new voters. Stalin alleged that the online form was altered in July 2026 to require applicants to state whether they, their parents, or their grandparents appeared on the electoral roll from the previous SIR. He said this was done despite objections from the Election Commissioners and without the necessary amendment to the applicable rules.He also referred to the Supreme Court’s clarification on October 5, which stated that the Court had not approved the modified Form 6 declaration.Another concern raised by Stalin is the centralisation of the electoral roll database. He cited objections from Election Commissioners about state-level statutory officials not having complete access to the relevant systems, arguing that officials responsible for maintaining constituency rolls must retain the ability to verify and correct voter records.Concerns over ECINET and developments in other statesStalin also cited a report published by Hindustan Times on October 20, concerning an audit of the Election Commission’s ECINET portal.According to the memorandum, the audit by civic-technology initiative Charchagram found code that could prevent electoral registration officers and assistant electoral registration officers in West Bengal from accessing voter enumeration forms and notice-and-hearing dashboards. The memorandum said the feature had been identified in code examined in October 2026 and that no similar exclusion had been found for other states.Stalin argued that such restrictions could undermine the statutory authority of electoral registration officers. He called for an independent forensic audit of ECINET and ERONET, the ECI’s electoral roll management system, by experts who are not under the Commission’s control.He also cited developments in West Bengal, where, the memorandum said, deletions exceeded victory margins in 49 of the state’s 294 constituencies. It further refers to around 60 lakh electors being flagged for “logical discrepancies”, of whom 27 lakh were reportedly deleted, and says the Supreme Court had placed the final stage of the SIR under judicial officers’ supervision in February 2026.The memorandum also referred to Punjab, where the draft roll published on August 13 was reportedly around 20.66 lakh names short of the electorate recorded in June 2026. Stalin that more than 13 crore names had been struck off draft electoral rolls across 30 states and Union Territories.DMK seeks cancellation of SIR and return to paper ballotsIn addition to the requests concerning Gyanesh Kumar and the Tamil Nadu electoral rolls, Stalin has asked the President to facilitate the cancellation of the SIR across all states. He has called for future revisions to be conducted in accordance with the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, with adequate time for the process and individual notice and hearings for electors.He has sought an independent forensic audit of ECINET and ERONET, covering access permissions, audit trails, alterations to electoral rolls, state-specific restrictions, and mechanisms for restoring eligible electors. He has also asked that all files, meeting agendas, minutes, official notes, and recorded objections concerning the SIR be preserved.The memorandum called for the restoration of the pre-SIR electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu and asked that the post-SIR rolls not be used in future elections or by-elections in the state.Stalin has also sought measures to restore public confidence in elections, including the introduction of paper ballots in place of electronic voting machines (EVMs). Pending such a change, he has demanded the counting of 100% of VVPAT slips.Concluding the memorandum, Stalin said the Election Commission’s reputation belonged to the people of India and not to any individual holding office. He urged the President to intervene to protect the constitutional right to vote and ensure that the electoral process remained independent, transparent and fair.