The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka, has published the draft electoral rolls for the State. The rolls can be checked here.
However, the process hit a glitch in the initial hours of the release itself, with the website crashing owing to heavy traffic for some constituencies. Citizens who tried to access the rolls were met with error messages or PDFs that would not open.
While many were able to open the Kannada rolls across a few districts and booths, all the English language files were reported to be corrupted. Some could access till their booth/part details but couldn’t download PDFs, while others who clicked the ‘Download’ option, were seeing html files instead of the PDF.
“They don’t do proper test before releasing. In the morning, they had enabled the link but it took to the byepoll list without any SIR option in the drop down. Later they disabled again [and] opened up without any pdf opening at all… (sic)” an X user remarked.
Citizens who tried to access the rolls were met with error messages or PDFs that would not open.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu
The draft roll has seen the deletion of more than 1.07 crore names. Bengaluru, which had an electorate of 1.03 crore voters, has seen its electoral roll shrink to 56.11 lakh voters.
Those who find their names marked under the Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead or Others (ASDDO) categories can fill out Form 6 and apply for inclusion during the claims and objections period, from August 24 to September 22.
How will notices be served?
Starting today (August 24), notices will also be issued to voters whose records have been flagged for logical discrepancies or who could not be mapped to the 2002 electoral rolls. The notices will be delivered by booth-level officers (BLOs), while hearings will be conducted by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) or Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs).
Together, 43.80 lakh notices will be served across Karnataka, of which 24.05 lakh are concentrated in Bengaluru alone. BLOs will go house to house to serve the notices. Any government premises, such as a police station, a government building nearest to the polling station, or gram panchayat office, may be chosen as the hearing venue.
A voter receiving a notice must appear before the ERO in person, even if the required documents are submitted online. A QR code will be printed on the notice, allowing voters to scan it and submit their documents online. The notice will mention the name of the officer, the venue and date of the hearing, along with the reason for which the voter has received it.
A BLO will make only two attempts to serve the notice. If a voter does not attend the hearing, the ERO/AERO will reschedule it only once. The notice can be served to someone on the voter’s behalf, such as a family member or, if no family member is present, a neighbour. However, only the voter can appear for the hearing.
Why are close to 1.08 crore voters staring at mass exclusion? | Decode Karnataka
Published – August 24, 2026 01:13 pm IST
