UP SIR: Nearly 28.9 million voter names deleted; Lucknow, Ghaziabad most affected

Manoj BhadraLucknow, Jan. 6 -- : The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) has resulted in the deletion of about 28.9 million voters-nearly 18.7 per cent of Uttar Pradesh's electorate-according to the draft electoral rolls published on Tuesday.

With the release of the SIR draft rolls, the total number of voters in the state has come down from 154.43 million to 125.56 million.

Data show that of the deleted voters, 21.7 million (14.06 per cent) were categorised as permanently shifted or absent, 4.6 million (2.99 per cent) as deceased, and 2.54 million (1.65 per cent) as duplicate entries.

Besides, 7,74,472 voters (0.50 per cent) were removed for not returning enumeration f...