Bengaluru: Foreign nationals accounted for just 0.007% of the nearly 1 crore names deleted from Karnataka’s electoral rolls during the special intensive revision (SIR), with officials identifying 716 such cases in an exercise that resulted in 99.76 lakh deletions, including 16.39 lakh that were dead.The figure puts into perspective one of the stated objectives of the revision: identifying foreign nationals enrolled as voters. The Election Commission of India (ECI), announcing the first phase of the latest SIR in Bihar in June 2025, cited the inclusion of foreign illegal immigrants, along with migration, urbanisation, unreported deaths and newly eligible voters, as reasons for undertaking an intensive revision.Union home minister Amit Shah has described SIR as essential to prevent foreign nationals from influencing democratic decisions, arguing that “only Indian citizens should determine who governs the country”.The Karnataka figure, however, amounts to roughly seven for every 1 lakh names deleted, or one foreign national for every 13,932 deletions.BBMP North in Bengaluru accounted for the bulk of the cases, with 583, followed by 107 across Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada. The remaining cases were reported from districts including Gadag, Bagalkot, Belagavi and Hassan.Officials said most of those identified were Nepalese citizens or people with Indian origins who now retained citizenship of another country. The coastal districts had 71 Nepalese citizens on the rolls, including 37 in Udupi.Others were citizens of the US, Canada, the UK, France, the Netherlands, South Africa and Norway. One citizen each from Bangladesh and Pakistan was identified. BBMP North alone had 545 Nepalese citizens with voter IDs. In BBMP Central, at least 25 cases emerged from just two polling booths, an official said.During verification, booth -level officers found that some individuals held Nepalese citizenship and obtained documents for relinquishing their voter IDs here. Officials also checked older electoral records dating to 2002 to establish the individuals’ identities and citizenship status.Chief electoral officer, Karnataka Anbu Kumar had on Tuesday indicated that the final figure could be more, but stated that the total number would not exceed 1,000.
