Bhubaneswar: The BJD on Sunday alleged major discrepancies in Odisha’s draft electoral roll published under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, claiming that nearly 27 lakh electors have been excluded, much higher than the 20.12 lakh deletions announced by election authorities, a charge denied by the BJP.Addressing the media, BJD senior vice-president and former minister Debi Prasad Mishra said the final electoral roll published in 2025 showed Odisha had 3.4 crore voters. During discussions with political parties in May, the voter strength was stated to be around 3.34 crore, which later stood at 3.33 crore at the start of the SIR process. However, the draft electoral roll published on Sunday showed only 3.13 crore voters.“There is no consistency in the figures officially provided at different stages. While it is being claimed that around 20 lakh voters have been excluded, our analysis shows the actual number is close to 27 lakh,” Mishra alleged.According to the BJD, the draft electoral roll shows 125 Assembly constituencies have recorded deletions of more than 10,000 electors each. Of these, 49 constituencies have witnessed deletions of over 15,000 electors each, the party said.Mishra alleged that many genuine voters had been left out. He accused the authorities of making the verification process unnecessarily complicated by insisting on multiple documents and demanded that the procedure be simplified.BJP, though, said the SIR process was being conducted properly in Odisha. BJP state spokesperson Manoj Mohapatra alleged that some people who are not Indian citizens, mostly Bangladeshis and others, had managed to obtain voter ID cards with the help of the previous govt. “Now the opposition is worried because those people are not being included in the electoral roll,” Mohapatra said.The BJD urged the Election Commission and the CEO to conduct fresh verification, remove inconsistencies and restore the names of all eligible voters omitted from the draft roll. The party said that while ineligible voters should be removed, no eligible citizen should be denied the right to vote.Congress state president Bhakta Charan Das said they have problem with the deletion of around 12 lakh people from the draft electoral roll. “The CEO’s office said they were absent, had shifted, were enrolled at multiple places or were removed for other reasons. But many of them are migrant workers who could not come to Odisha during the SIR process because of job commitments or lack of awareness. Employers do not allow them to return to their native places because of advance payments made to them. We are concerned about these 12 lakh deletions,” Das said.
