On Saturday, the Congress party sent a letter from Anandan Nambiar, an 85-year-old voter from Taliparamba in Kannur district, to Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) Ratan U. Handed over to Kelkar. Originally addressed to the Electoral Registration Officer (Taliparamba), it reads: “Sir, since I was not at home at the time of enumeration form for Special Intensive Revision (SIR), I was included in the Absent/Transferred/Dead (ASD) list as ‘Form Rejected’. I request you to include me, who is in the existing voter list of Booth 154, in the draft voter list and not deprive me of the right to vote.” The former Indian Railways employee says his name does not appear in the 2002 SIR roll as he was posted in Odisha at that time. ‘Family mapping’ is also impossible in his case as both his parents died before 2002.
Nambiar’s case is not an isolated case. On December 20, Rajaji Mathew Thomas, a former CPI MLA, created a stir when he stood up at a weekly political party meeting on SIR chaired by the CEO (Kerala) and complained that he and his wife Shantha had been excluded from the voter list. Political parties described this as another example of the shortcomings of the SIR exercise in Kerala.
After the Election Commission of India (EC) published the draft rolls on December 23, Thomas found that his name was included in it, but his wife was still out!
“Both my parents’ names were in the 2002 list, but not mine. I raised the issue in the December 20 meeting, following which my name has now been included in the draft roll. But my wife’s name has been left out. She has been a regular voter since 1991 and has also voted in the recently concluded local body elections,” says Thomas.
MLA also in the list
According to the Kerala government, the names of Tiruvalla MLA Mathew T. Thomas and former state police chief Raman Srivastava, who both have been continuously residing in the state and have been enrolled as voters for a long time, were also missing in the draft list.
Srivastava says he has not checked the draft rolls yet, but points out that he has been casting his vote in every election. “I have an election identity card issued in 1997 and a new ID card issued later. Since 1986, I have been voting at a booth in UP School at Kulasekharam, Thiruvananthapuram. But I was not here from October 1999 to October 2004. Hence, my name is clearly not in the list of 2002. But I have been voting in all the subsequent elections. My The name should have been there somewhere,” argues Srivastava.
24.08 lakh voters, which is 8.65% of the electorate, have been omitted from the draft roll published on December 23 at the conclusion of the house-to-house enumeration phase of Kerala SIR. This has surprised political parties as well as voters. Of these, 6,49,885 were identified as dead, while 1,36,029 were ‘duplicate names’.
But the ‘untraceable/absent’ (6,45,548 names), ‘permanently transferred’ (8,16,221 names), and ‘others’ categories have attracted a lot of attention. Reportedly 1,60,830 voters have refused to accept or return the counting forms. These five categories together constitute ‘uncollectibles’ in EC parlance.
For example, the number of ‘missing’ voters is high in two polling stations of St. Teresa Higher Secondary School in Ernakulam Assembly constituency and Pattam Thanu Pillai Memorial Upper Primary School in Thiruvananthapuram constituency, which are at a distance of more than 200 km.
A booth-level officer at the help desk set up as part of the SIR exercise in Kochi helps with the calculation form. , Photo Courtesy: H. Vibhu
As of December 23, there are 382 entries in the ASD list at the Ernakulam booth, and 538 entries at the booth in the state capital.
Some of these voters have either died or moved out permanently. However, most of them are listed as ‘unreported/absent’. The numbers may appear small. Nevertheless, they are important because the voter population of a polling station is now limited to 1,200 voters.
While officials engaged in the revision process say the phenomenon is largely confined to urban areas in Kerala, political parties are racking their brains and trying to assess the accuracy of the draft voter list and the updated ASD list published by the Election Commission.
Enumeration forms were distributed to 2,78,50,855 voters during the door-to-door campaign. Yet, there are only 2,54,42,352 voters in the draft rolls. This has made comparison inevitable with the voter list maintained by the State Election Commission (SEC), which manages local body elections.
For the local bodies elections in December 2025, the SEC list had a total of 2,86,05,525 voters, which is 31.63 lakh voters more than the draft roll now published by the Election Commission.
Political parties say many of the missing voters are alive and have been regular voters, and it would be unfair to ask them to enroll as new voters. They also allege that the calculation forms have not been distributed at many places.
“We are in the process of assessing the draft roll of the Election Commission. We are sure that at least 40% of the people in the ASD list are still in Kerala,” says senior Congress leader MK Rahman, who represents the party in the CEO (Kerala) review meetings. Rehman has been keenly contesting the Election Commission’s claims regarding the numbers in the ‘non-observable’, ‘permanently transferred’ and ‘other’ categories.
Those in the ‘Unmapped List’
Senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader MV Jayarajan echoes these concerns. “It is now clear that what political parties are saying is true. Out of 2.78 crore voters in the electoral roll till October 27, 2025, only 2.54 crore have found a place in the draft roll. About 19.32 lakh voters are in the ‘unmapped’ list in the draft roll. Their names cannot be linked (mapped) to the 2002 SIR roll. Notices will be issued to these voters to submit documents. Establish their identity. Do,” says Jayarajan.
The Election Commission’s decision to proceed with the SIR had created concerns in Kerala. Apart from their ideological and political objections to SIR, political parties drew attention to the practical issues involved in the process. Moreover, ensuring that Kerala’s large migrant population of over 30 lakh was not left out was a tough challenge. The Election Commission did not accept the demand of political parties to postpone the SIR in view of the local body elections in Kerala.
Chief Electoral Officer of Kerala, Ratan U. Kelkar chaired the weekly update meeting with representatives of various political parties regarding SIR in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday. , Photo Credit: Nirmal Harindaran
On 29 September, the Kerala Assembly passed a unanimous resolution urging the Election Commission to desist from actions that “could potentially harm the rights of the people.” The proposal also raised concerns over the timing of the process, as it coincided with local body elections. The decision to use the 2002 SIR roll as a base document and the eligibility conditions set for voters also invited opposition from political parties.
The perceived work pressure and ‘deadline anxiety’ by booth level officers (BLOs), who distributed and collected enumeration forms to voters and uploaded the data online, came into sharp focus after the suicide of Anish George, a BLO in Payyannur in Kannur district. On 17 November, BLO stopped work and took out a protest march.
By then the demand for extending the deadline of SIR had intensified. As the SEC is moving ahead with its plan to conduct local body elections in December, political parties informed the Election Commission that the government machinery and their booth level agents will be linked to the electoral process. In addition, the SEC was in the process of updating its own voter list through enrollment drives. The parties alleged that overall, the operational overlap with local body elections would confuse the public, ultimately impacting the quality of the SIR.
Subsequently, the Kerala government, CPI(M) and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) moved the Supreme Court, seeking extension of the deadline.
Kelkar has been holding weekly meetings with political parties to update them about the process and its progress. The media is allowed access to these meetings, and press releases on the process are being issued regularly. Special camps were also organized across the state to collect filled forms and digitize the data. The ASD list is also published in advance to help party workers locate missing voters. “Our mandate is to include all eligible voters in the list and exclude ineligible voters. But we have tried to take it forward by making the process more participatory,” says Kelkar. He assured that nomination of voters can be done till the last day of filing nomination for the 2026 assembly elections.
Final list on 21st February
Claims and objections on the draft list can be filed till January 22, and the hearing/verification phase will end on February 14. Officials say the final voter list is scheduled to be published on February 21.
On 19 December, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan urged the Election Commission to re-examine the SIR process and avoid undue haste, while suggesting that voters should not be put off by technicalities. Kerala Chief Secretary A. In a formal letter written by Jayathilak to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the Kerala government pointed out lapses in the exercise and sought an extension of at least two weeks for the submission of counting forms.
Although the state government also highlighted the cases of Mathew T. Thomas, Rajaji Thomas and Srivastava as specific examples of high-profile citizens being left out of the list, and sought extension of time to complete the process, the plea was rejected.
Now, lakhs of voters, who have removed themselves from the rolls, face the difficult task of queuing up in front of the designated officers to get themselves enrolled as new voters.
