New Delhi, Jan. 7 -- Uttar Pradesh has 125.6 million electors on its draft electoral roll after the special intensive revision (SIR), 28.9 million less than the 154.4 million electors as on October 27, 2025, the date the Election Commission of India (ECI) is using as reference. This reduction in number is almost the same as the 28.9 million voters who voted in the 2024 elections in Britain. UP will now have fewer electors than it had in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. This is not the case in any other state or Union Territory where the SIR was done, except Andaman and Nicobar, and Tamil Nadu. Compared to the 2014 roll, the decline is 9.5% in UP, 8.5% in Andaman and Nicobar, and 1.3% in Tamil Nadu. UP's rolls now have 18.7% fewer voters compared to October 27. This is the highest for any of the 13 regions - Bihar last year and 12 regions this year - where the SIR has been completed, except Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Among large states, only Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh have seen deletions higher than 10%. To be sure, the exercise also involves another round of claims and objections when more names can be deleted or added. What really explains the extraordinary deletion in UP? One of the clues lies in the summary information provided by the respective Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) when the post-enumeration phase rolls were published. Death of an existing voter on the electoral roll accounts for the smallest share of total deletions in Uttar Pradesh among major states where SIR has been done. This number is just 16% of the total deletions in UP compared to an average of 22% in all states and union territories where SIR has been conducted. It is the highest, 41.5%, in West Bengal. Untraceable/permanently shifted voters - not all states have given data on these two heads separately - account for 75% of the total deletions in UP, higher than the average of 71%. UP also has the highest instance of deletions under the already enrolled category, which would suggest double counting in the rolls. Some of the electoral roll noise - which SIR is supposed to have corrected - in the untraceable or permanently shifted and already enrolled categories is expected to be because of reasons such as migration, including women migrating for marriage or overall migration for economic purposes. Does UP have a much higher economic migration rate than other states? This could be a possibility. The highest district-wise deletions and deletions on account of voters being untraceable or permanently moved is the highest in districts which are supposed to be the biggest urban clusters in the state. The top five districts by percentage deletions are Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Balrampur, Kanpur Nagar, and Meerut which saw 30%, 28.8%, 26%, 25.5%, and 24.7% deletions, respectively. The top five districts by percentage deletions on account of untraceable or permanently moved are largely the same except for Meerut, which slips to the sixth place and is replaced by Gautam Buddha Nagar district (which includes Noida and Greater Noida). The five districts with lowest proportionate deletions are among the least urban or economically dynamic in the state. They are Lalitpur, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Banda, and Amroha with deletions of 10%, 10.8%, 12.4%, 13%, 13.2% respectively....