SIR in Karnataka: Deadline for house-to-house verification extended till Aug 17 due to higher number of ASDDO cases

The Election Commission has extended the house-to-house verification for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Karnataka by nine days, from the earlier deadline of August 8. The new deadline to submit the enumeration forms is August 17. This extension gives Booth Level Officers (BLOs) more time to physically verify electors who have been marked under the Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others (ASDDO) category. The publication of the draft electoral roll has also been deferred from August 17 to 24, while the final electoral roll will now be published on October 27 instead of October 19.

The extension comes as Karnataka completes digitisation of virtually all enumeration forms but continues to grapple with an unusually large number of electors requiring field verification. According to the Chief Electoral Officer’s latest data, 5,54,32,132 enumeration forms (EFs and ASDDO combined) have been digitised, leaving only 182 forms pending. However, 1,09,83,901 electors—19.81 per cent of the state’s electorate have been classified as ASDDO, making Karnataka one of the states with the highest proportion of electors requiring further verification during the ongoing SIR exercise. Nearly half of these cases are from Greater Bengaluru area.

The largest component within the ASDDO category comprises 66,14,954 permanently shifted voters (11.93 per cent), followed by 15,90,165 untraceable or absent electors (2.87 per cent), 16,34,326 deceased voters (2.95 per cent), 6,96,536 already enrolled elsewhere (1.26 per cent), and 4,47,920 others (0.81 per cent).

The extension also reflects the scale of the exercise in Bengaluru, which has emerged as the biggest challenge in the revision. Of the state’s ASDDO electors, nearly 49.4 lakh are from Bengaluru, accounting for more than 45 per cent of all ASDDO cases in Karnataka, despite the city representing a much smaller share of the state’s electorate. Within BBMP limits, several Assembly segments have close to half their electorate marked for verification. Since almost every enumeration form has already been digitised, the remaining work is less about collection of forms and more about ensuring that electors classified as absent or shifted are correctly verified and that eligible voters are not omitted.

The poll panel has also continued its enrolment drive during the extension period. Between June 16 and August 6, it received 12.43 lakh statutory applications, including 3.83 lakh Form 6 applications for new voter registration, 8.25 lakh Form 8 applications for corrections, 31,275 Form 7 applications for deletion and 3,328 Form 6A applications. Nearly 6.99 lakh electors also submitted Enumeration Forms online.

Karnataka’s ASDDO among the highest with 19.81 per cent of its electorate currently marked as ASDDO, Karnataka’s figure is substantially higher than the net voter reductions reported after SIR exercises in several states that completed the process earlier. Election Commission data show approximate reductions of 14.5 per cent in Gujarat, 13.2 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, 11.8 per cent in Chhattisgarh, 10.9 per cent in West Bengal, and about 6 per cent in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan after their revisions.

The revised schedule now provides election authorities with an additional window to add wrongly marked or missed out voters to the draft roll.