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| Photo Credit: The Hindu
Keralites numbering around 500 who have acquired foreign citizenship will be removed from the voters’ list shortly. Also, a few Sri Lankans and Nepalis, who were enrolled as voters, will be eliminated from the list once the Special Intensive Revision exercise is completed.
The data of such Keralites and foreign nationals emerged from 10 districts as the revision process has entered the final stages.
Kottayam tops the list of overseas citizenship found during the SIR hearing phase with 178 people as of Tuesday (February 3, 2026). Ernakulam and Pathanamthitta follow with 154 and 93 respectively.
Of the 178 people in Kottayam, 50 have secured Canadian citizenship and 31 have become citizens of the U.K. The remaining countries include the U.S., Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Ireland, and Australia. The list includes one case of Ukrainian citizenship too, according to district election officials.
Ernakulam’s list consists of 56 U.K. citizens and 43 Canadian citizens.
The number of overseas citizens found during SIR hearing in other districts as follows: Kasaragod -6, Kannur – 2, Wayanad – 13, Kozhikode – 9, Palakkad – 42, Thrissur – 18 and Alappuzha – 43.
The data for Malappuram, Idukki and Thiruvananthapuram were not available while official sources said the figure in Kollam was below 20. The countries of Keralaites’ chosen citizenship include Denmark, Belgium, UAE and Norway too, as per available SIR data.
In most of the cases, relatives of those who were called for hearing intimated the officials concerned about their newly acquired citizenship and requested not to retain their names in the fresh voter rolls to avoid complications, officials from different districts involved in SIR said.
Non-Resident Indians who are absent from the country owing to employment, education etc, who has not acquired citizenship of any other country, are eligible to be registered as a voter in the address mentioned in their passport.
The identification of people of Nepalese and Sri Lankan origin in the voters’ list has raised questions about the earlier enrolment process.
Citizens of Nepal were found included in the pre-SIR voter rolls in several districts, including eight such cases in Wayanad, four in Kasaragod and a few in Thrissur and Kollam too. Ernakulam reported one case of Nepalese origin. A few cases of Sri Lankan origin have also been reported, officials said.
“It is understood that they were enrolled in the previous electoral roll somehow. However, when they were called for hearing as they were not mapped with the SIR base rolls of 2002, they could not produce valid documents proving Indian citizenship. Hence they have been marked to be excluded from the final list,” an election official from northern Kerala, requesting anonymity, said.
Published – February 04, 2026 09:19 am IST
