Chandigarh: More than 20 lakh voters in Punjab have been identified as deceased, permanently shifted, untraceable, or duplicate during the house-to-house enumeration phase of the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.The 40-day exercise, conducted across all 23 districts and 117 assembly constituencies began on June 25 and ended on Monday, with 1,93,94,408 electors submitting enumeration forms, accounting for 90.37% of the state’s 2,14,61,043 registered voters listed as of June 9, 2026.Sharing details at a news conference on Tuesday, Punjab chief electoral officer Anindita Mitra said the exercise aimed to ensure the inclusion of all eligible voters, delete ineligible entries and improve electoral roll accuracy and transparency. Of the 20.66 lakh electors (9.63%) who did not submit forms, 9,44,131 (4.40%) were found to have permanently shifted, 5,74,568 (2.68%) were deceased, 4,12,715 (1.92%) were untraceable or absent, and 1,19,145 (0.56%) were duplicates.Mitra said while 93.40% of electors included in the draft roll were successfully mapped with records from 2003 or earlier revisions, around 12.80 lakh electors (6.6%) who submitted forms could not be matched. In accordance with Election Commission guidelines, notices will be issued to these unmapped electors starting Aug 13 for further verification to establish their antecedents.The draft electoral roll will be published on Aug 13, opening the claims and objections window till Sept 12. Disposal of these claims will continue until Oct 8, ahead of the final electoral roll publication on Oct 12.Booth level officers (BLOs) visited every registered residence, making at least three follow-up visits and leaving intimation slips where electors could not be contacted to ensure complete coverage. The exercise was carried out by 23 district election officers, 117 electoral registration officers, 234 assistant electoral registration officers, 2,501 supervisors and 24,453 BLOs.Responding to a question, Mitra said AAP had appointed 24,220 booth level agents, followed by Congress (23,154), Shiromani Akali Dal (18,429), BJP (18,149), BSP (3,635) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) (296).As part of the revision, Punjab also rationalised its polling stations, increasing their total number from 24,453 to 25,332. Mitra said this was done to improve voter accessibility and ensure no polling station exceeds 1,200 electors, in line with EC guidelines.
