Hyderabad, adjoining ACs drive Telangana’s record SIR deletions

At the end of the enumeration period of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in Telangana, the State registered a 21.7% deletion of names from its pre-SIR electoral rolls, the highest in the country so far. The table below shows the percentage of deletions in the major States where the SIR has been undertaken. The draft electoral roll in Telangana will see the addition and re-entry of electors following the corrections period, but even taking that into account, the 21.7% figure is a rather large one. Only Uttar Pradesh with 18.7%, Tamil Nadu with 15.2%, and Gujarat with 14.5% come close to Telangana in the draft-stage deletion rate.

The map below shows the deletion rate across Assembly Constituencies (ACs) in the State.

In 21 ACs, the deletion rate was a whopping 35% or more, and 19 of these fall in the “Highly Urban” band. Most were in and around the cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad — Musheerabad registered the highest deletion rate in the State at 45.2%, followed by Sanathnagar (44.9%), Malakpet (44.8%), Lal Bahadur Nagar (44.4%), Jubilee Hills (44.1%), Secunderabad Cantonment (42.8%) and Serilingampally (42.7%).

The map below shows the 15 constituencies of Hyderabad district. Across the 21 “Highly Urban” constituencies, nearly 70% of those deleted were taken off the rolls because they had “shifted”.

Unlike States such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Keralam, which recorded a drop in gender ratio between their 2024 Lok Sabha rolls and their final SIR rolls, Telangana’s draft rolls show a slight increase — the ratio rose from 1,018 in the pre-SIR roll to 1,028 in the draft roll (Table 2). Tamil Nadu saw a similar bump, from 1,034 in its 2024 Lok Sabha roll to 1,044 in its final SIR roll. Telangana’s figure, however, is at the draft stage and could still change.

As shown in the table below, the urban-rural split in terms of deletions was sharp.

In “Highly Urban” constituencies, the deletion rate was 40.4%. In “Moderately Urban” constituencies it was 29.8%, but that figure is driven by the peri-urban belt adjoining Hyderabad rather than by the district towns: Maheswaram (41%) and Rajendranagar (38.9%), both in Rangareddy district, Patancheru (31.9%) in Sangareddy district, and Medchal (31.5%) in Medchal Malkajgiri district all recorded rates at or above the “Highly Urban” range. The urban seats in the same band were lower — Warangal West at 28.9%, Nizamabad (Urban) at 27%, Khammam at 24.6%, and Warangal East at 19.5%.

In contrast, in the “Moderately Rural” and “Highly Rural” constituencies, the deletion rate was much lower — 12.37% and 11.92% respectively. In the former category, again, several of the highest deletion rates are in areas not far from Hyderabad. Among “Highly Rural” constituencies, Achampet (16%), Makthal (15.7%), Mudhole (14.9%), and Yellandu (14.6%) registered the highest deletion rates.

To classify Telangana’s 119 constituencies, night-time light intensity from SHRUG database maintained by Development Data Lab was used. And for each constituency, the average brightness across its area was calculated. Because a few city seats are far brighter than the rest, the values were first converted to a logarithmic scale, then grouped using Jenks Natural Breaks — a standard mapping technique that finds the cut-off points where the data separate most naturally — into “Highly Urban”, “Moderately Urban”, “Moderately Rural” and “Highly Rural”.

More granular analyses will follow in forthcoming articles.

(With inputs from Swathi Vadlamudi)