Kerala flags mass voter exclusions, says lakhs never got enumeration forms

The Kerala government has flagged what it describes as a serious breakdown in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, warning that large numbers of voters never received enumeration forms in the first place, a lapse it says may have led to the wrongful exclusion of around 25 lakh electors.

In a letter sent by the chief secretary to the Election Commission of India and addressed to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the state has sought an immediate extension of the deadline for submitting enumeration forms, arguing that the revision exercise remains incomplete and opaque.

According to the Kerala government, enumeration forms were not distributed to all voters, undermining the very foundation of the SIR process. It said the Election Commission has neither published nor shared details of voters to whom forms could not be delivered, leaving political parties and electors with no way to verify omissions or seek timely corrections.

The letter notes that after the 2025 special summary revision, Kerala’s electorate stood at about 2.78 crore voters. However, lakhs of names have since been removed under categories such as absent/untraceable, permanently shifted, enumeration form shifted, EF refused and death. The state warned that many of these deletions appear to stem from procedural failures rather than genuine changes in voter status.

Crucially, the government said even prominent, long-time residents were affected, citing cases such as sitting Thiruvalla MLA Mathew T. Thomas, former Ollur MLA Rajaji Mathew, and former Kerala director-general of police Raman Srivastava, along with members of their families. Their exclusion, the state argued, underscores the systemic nature of the problem.

The government also pointed out that many voters who had featured in the 2021 Assembly election rolls — and had voted then — are now missing from the revised lists. In several polling stations, the number of voters marked as “forms not collected” was described as unusually high, raising further doubts about the integrity of the exercise.

As an illustration, the letter cited polling station number 138 at Sreevaraham in Thiruvananthapuram, where as many as 704 voters were reportedly shown as having not submitted forms — an extraordinary figure given that a booth typically has fewer than 1,200 voters in total. The state warned that similar anomalies may exist elsewhere and require urgent scrutiny.

Additional concerns were raised about voter mapping. The government said individuals who were below 18 years of age in 2002 but later became eligible had not been properly linked with existing voter records, including those of their family members, leaving gaps in the rolls.

Despite these unresolved issues, the Election Commission closed the enumeration form update process on 19 December. Kerala noted that both political parties and the Supreme Court have sought an extension of the deadline.

Urging the Commission to grant at least a two-week extension, the state said that an error-free voter list is fundamental to free and fair elections, and that all complaints from eligible voters must be addressed before the SIR process can be considered complete.

With PTI inputs