Karnataka SIR: 64.5 lakh voters potentially missing in rolls, majority of them young

The 18 to 29 age group accounted for the majority of those missing, calculations showed. File | Photo Credit: Allen Egenuse. J

Around 64.5 lakh electors are potentially missing from the final electoral rolls of Karnataka released after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise on Tuesday (October 27, 2026), based on the Elector-to-Population (E-to-P) ratio of 66.11 released by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).

The State’s E-to-P ratio quoted in the CEO’s statements was calculated as the ratio between the total number of electors on the rolls and the estimated population in 2026 in all age groups, including those below 18 years of age and not eligible to vote.

The 18 to 29 age group accounted for the majority of those missing, calculations further showed. Of the 64.5 lakh potentially missing, 38.41 lakh (59.5%) are in the 18-29 age group.

The statements of CEO cited the 2020 Report of the Technical Group on Population Projections, constituted by the National Commission on Population, and widely used by various government agencies, for the population estimates.

The Hindu used the estimated population for different age groups from the same report to estimate the potential number of electors missing from the rolls. As per the report, the estimated population in Karnataka as of March 1, 2026 should be around 6.89 crore, of which the population eligible to vote should be 5.19 crore.

If all eligible voters had been included, the total in the rolls would have been roughly 5.19 crore. However, the final rolls released on Tuesday had only 4,54,55,689 electors (excluding Service Electors), which is a shortfall of about 64.5 lakh voters.