The press notes released by the state/ UT Chief Electoral Officers show the draft electoral rolls saw a 7% decrease overall, with 32.08 lakh names being removed. While most of those deleted have been categorised as deceased, shifted/ absent or enrolled at multiple places, a new category has been mentioned in Odisha, Uttarakhand and Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu — “others”. Uttarakhand CEO BVRC Purushottam told The Indian Express the “others” category was rolled out in the third phase of the SIR through the BLO app, which is the EC’s central app used by BLOs to process enumeration forms. “These are the electors who refused to submit or sign their enumeration forms,” the CEO said.

l In a press note on July 14, the Uttarakhand CEO said that 71.33 lakh electors had made it to draft roll, or 89.51% of the pre-SIR electors. Of those deleted, 4.77 lakh were found to have shifted, 1.56 lakh absent, 1.24 lakh deceased, and 69,231 were listed as “others” (other reasons).

l In Odisha, the CEO’s press note, on July 5, said that 3.13 crore electors, or 93.97% of the pre-SIR electorate, had filled the enumeration forms and thus made it to the draft roll, while 8.32 lakh were found “deceased”, 10.07 lakh “shifted/ absent”, 1.58 lakh “enrolled at multiple places in the electoral roll”, and 14,000 of the deleted were in the “others” category.

l The UT of Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu also had 1,106 electors deleted in the “others” category, as per its CEO’s press note on July 10.

The reason for the deletion gains significance as the EC maintains that genuine electors who have been deleted in the draft roll can be added back to the final roll during the one-month claims and objections period. The deletions followed a one-month enumeration phase in which the EC’s BLOs were to go house-to-house to verify the status of all electors and get enumeration forms filled by them. Those who were found to have died, shifted, absent or enrolled elsewhere were marked as such by the BLOs and deleted in the draft roll.

While the “other” category was not used in the first phase of the SIR, which was rolled out by the EC in Bihar in June 2025, it was mentioned as a part of a different category in two UTs in the second phase that covered nine states and three UTs from October 2025. One of the categories under which Puducherry and Lakshadweep had labelled deleted voters in their draft rolls published in December last year was “shifted/ absent/ others”. This time, Manipur has also used this category in its draft roll.