MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan said that apart from 24.08 lakh people listed in the ASD list and excluded from the draft roll, and 19.32 lakh people listed as non-mapped, 18 lakh voters are included in the ‘logical discrepancy’ list.
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The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) has asked the Election Commission of India (EC) to avoid summoning voters for personal hearings under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in cases listed as ‘logical discrepancies’ (inconsistencies in entries) and in non-mapping cases where voters are able to produce documents.
A KPCC delegation consisting of MLAs Mathew Kuzhalnadan, P.C. Vishnunadh and M. Vincent which met Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) Rathan U. Kelkar here on Saturday said that the SIR has snowballed into a harrowing and vexing experience for voters.
“The manner in which the Absent/Shifted/Dead (ASD) list, non-mapping list, and logical discrepancy list are being generated and acted upon has placed a significant number of genuine voters at risk of exclusion from the electoral rolls,” it said in a representation to the EC.
The Congress has also demanded that new enrolments under SIR be allowed till February 14, and that facilities for enrolment and corrections should be extended through panchayat and village offices to help voters. The overall process, according to the Congress, should be tuned towards ensuring that genuine voters are not subjected to procedural hardships.
After the meeting, Mr. Kuzhalnadan said that apart from 24.08 lakh listed in the ASD list and excluded from the draft roll, and 19.32 lakh people listed as non-mapped (meaning they could not be linked to the 2002 SIR list), 18 lakh voters are included in the ‘logical discrepancy’ list. “This means that the EC, which should be encouraging new enrolments in the voters’ list, has instead pushed around 60 lakh existing voters into uncertainty,” Mr. Kuzhalnadan alleged.
The KPCC delegation informed Mr. Kelkar that in the current state of SIR, a large number of eligible voters in Kerala could face expulsion from the electoral rolls, Mr. Kuzhalnadan said.
The Congress leaders also pointed out that summoning voters for hearings citing ‘logical discrepancies’ in the SIR entries was unfair since the EC or booth-level officers (BLO) themselves were responsible for the errors creeping into the entries.
Further, the KPCC has also criticised the rearrangement of polling stations which has resulted in family members getting scattered across stations. This has further compounded the confusion and hardship for voters who have been on the rolls for years, the KPCC said.
Published – January 17, 2026 05:03 pm IST
