Bengaluru: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) draft rolls have thrown up a clear divide in the state, with northern districts losing proportionally more voters to deletion while the south grapples with a heavier load of anomaly notices.Across the 15 northern districts, 34.5 lakh voters, or 15% of the electorate, were marked ASDDO (absent, shifted, dead, duplicate or others) and dropped from the draft list. This pulled the region’s voter count down from 2.3 crore before SIR to 1.9 crore in the draft.The southern districts, excluding Bengaluru, fared comparatively better, recording 26.5 lakh deletions, or 12% of the electorate. Their voter count fell from 2.2 crore to 1.9 crore.Kalaburagi, Raichur, Ballari, Yadgir and Dharwad recorded the highest deletion percentages in the north, while Mysuru, Davanagere, Kodagu, Kolar and Bengaluru Rural topped the south list.While the north lost more voters outright, the south is dealing with a bigger problem. About 6.6% of voters or 12.7 lakh people, are set to receive notices, against 3.6% (7 lakh), in the north.Anomalies are driving most of these notices. In the south, 9.3 lakh voters face notices over anomalies and 3.4 lakh over a failure to map with 2002 electoral data. In the north, the anomaly count stands at 4.8 lakh, with 2.2 lakh flagged for the mapping gap.Bengaluru’s numbers are the starkest. The city’s electorate shrank from a little over one crore in the pre-SIR rolls to just 57 lakh in the draft list released on Aug 24.Meanwhile, while names of legitimate voters who submitted enumeration forms are missing from the 2026 draft electoral roll, former legislator Mukthar Unnissa Begum, who died in 2017, finds a place in the list, prompting officials to launch a verification.Begum’s name continues to figure in part number 157 of Chamaraja assembly segment. She represented Narasimharaja constituency in 1985 and was a voter in Chamaraja.Showkath Pasha, vice-president of the district Congress committee, said he flagged the issue to BLO and EC officials concerned and demanded officials produce the signed enumeration form — if one exists for Begum.Lakshmikanth Reddy, deputy commissioner and district election officer, said he had not received any complaint regarding Begum’s name. “This is a draft list, and objections will be verified before the final list is published,” he said
