Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government has raised serious concerns with the Election Commission (EC) over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, warning that around 25 lakh voters may have been wrongly excluded, official sources said on Monday.

In a letter sent by Kerala Chief Secretary to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the state highlighted multiple errors in the SIR process and requested an extension of the deadline for submitting enumeration forms.

Potential voter exclusions and impact

According to the state, millions of voters across Kerala were removed from the rolls under categories such as Absent or Untraceable, Permanently Shifted, Enumeration Form Shifted, EF Refused, and Death. Authorities warned that these exclusions could result in many eligible voters losing their right to vote, including prominent permanent residents such as Thiruvalla MLA Mathew T Thomas, former Ollur MLA Rajaji Mathew, and former Kerala DGP Raman Srivastava, along with their families.

Following the 2025 Special Summary Revision, Kerala’s electoral rolls list about 2.78 crore voters. However, the state government said that enumeration forms were not distributed to all voters, and details of undistributed forms have not been published or shared with political parties.

The government has requested the EC to publish booth-wise and Assembly constituency-wise lists to allow voters and political parties to verify entries and seek corrections.

Issues with voter mapping and the SIR process

Kerala officials highlighted that voters who turned 18 after 2002 were not properly mapped with existing voter records, including family members, leaving the process incomplete. Many voters listed in the 2021 Assembly election rolls and who had voted then are reportedly missing from the current rolls.

At some polling stations, the number of voters marked as “forms not collected” was unusually high. For instance, polling station 138 at Sreevaraham in Thiruvananthapuram recorded 704 such voters, despite an average booth having fewer than 1,200 voters.

The state warned that similar discrepancies could exist across Kerala, requiring serious examination.

Request for deadline extension

Despite these concerns, the EC closed the enumeration form update process on December 19, 2025. Kerala noted that political parties and the Supreme Court have requested an extension of the deadline.

The government urged the EC to extend the deadline by at least two weeks, emphasising that an error-free voter list is crucial for free and fair elections, and that all complaints from eligible voters must be resolved for the SIR process to be completed properly.

PTI