A net reduction of 13.60 lakh registered voters — amounting to 6.34 percent of Punjab's total electorate — was recorded in the definitive rolls released on Monday, once the special intensive revision process had concluded. Spread across all 117 assembly constituencies, the pool of enrolled voters contracted to 2,01,00,727 — a drop of roughly 13.6 lakh from the 2,14,61,043 recorded on 9 June, ahead of the revision exercise.

Broken down by gender, the voter list records just over 1.03 crore male electors, roughly 97.24 lakh female electors, and 506 individuals registered under the third-gender category.

When the draft rolls were released on 13 August, they recorded a total of 1,93,94,435 registered electors — a figure arrived at after upwards of 20,66,608 names from the pre-SIR voter list had been removed. Among the removed entries, roughly 9.44 lakh (4.40%) were voters who had permanently relocated, while 5.74 lakh (2.68%) had passed away, 4.12 lakh (1.92%) could not be traced at their registered addresses, and 1.19 lakh (0.56%) were found to be duplicate registrations.

The updated voter rolls amount to a housekeeping exercise rather than a purge of eligible names, Punjab's chief electoral officer Anindita Mitra told reporters. Mitra clarified that the approximately 1.94 crore voters listed in the draft electoral roll served as the baseline figure for the exercise, rather than the 2.14 crore figure that had been put forward.

A net gain of 7.06 lakh names brought the rolls to just above the draft baseline of nearly 1.94 crore, with the overall intake standing at 7,97,263 newly registered electors — among them 2,93,049 young people who had turned 18 or 19 and were registering for the first time. The registered voter pool grew by 3.5 percent.

Of the 35.49 lakh electors who had received notices, a verified count of 86,038 were found to not meet eligibility criteria, with supporting documentation required to back each removal from the rolls. Among those who received notices were approximately 1.28 million voters whose registrations had not yet been mapped, identified by checking their details against electoral rolls held from the 2003 Special Intensive Revision.

Mitra clarified that any excluded individuals who were eligible to vote would have had their forms completed on their behalf, and went on to explain that supporting documentation had been gathered for each category of deletion — death certificates for deceased registrants, the EPIC numbers of duplicate entries where two records existed for the same person, and passport copies for those who had acquired citizenship elsewhere. Electoral rules hold that votes tied to deceased individuals, people who have relocated permanently, or duplicate registrations are treated as ineligible for counting.

Spanning a registered electorate of 1.94 crore, the process opened to submissions of claims and objections, with the revision exercise having got under way on 25 June. Objections and supporting claims were accepted through 12 September, roughly a month after the draft rolls became available on 13 August. Hearings run by electoral registration officers and their assistants carried the notice and disposal phase through to 8 October.

Details of how the procedure unfolded were made available for public scrutiny at each stage. Notifications went out to political parties at each step of the process. Voter rolls had been distributed to parties, their booth-level representatives, and the wider public a full month before the date in question. Numerous questions were submitted via WhatsApp, each receiving a timely response.

Physical copies of the completed electoral rolls, together with digital versions, were distributed to delegates representing each recognised political party, Mitra confirmed.

The AAP's legal representative, Ferry Sofat, noted that just as questions had arisen in West Bengal, no political party in Punjab had come forward to allege any electoral wrongdoing. Hardip Singh Kingra, posted to the proceedings by the Congress party, told those present that the process of delivering justice carries equal weight whether viewed from within or observed from outside.

N K Verma, convener of the Punjab BJP legal cell, noted that no political party had raised objections to removing voters deemed ineligible, duplicated, or relocated from the rolls, while Advocate Arshdeep Singh Kler, deployed by the Shiromani Akali Dal, indicated that the chief electoral officer had conducted the entire exercise in a manner that parties found open and accountable. The development drew expressions of support.

Questions about the SIR scheme's viability in Punjab had circulated among various stakeholders at the time. Mitra clarified that the electoral roll had not been reduced arbitrarily but had instead undergone a process of rationalisation, with the total number of registered voters growing by close to 800,000.

The total number of voting locations was lifted from 24,453 to 25,332, Mitra noted, with the expansion aimed at making it easier for voters to reach a polling station. Authorities released the definitive register of service voters on Monday, with 1 October serving as the eligibility cut-off date.

Those whose names were absent from the finalised electoral rolls, along with first-time voters seeking registration, were told by Mitra that Form 6 remained available for enrolment — either through the ECINET app online or by visiting booth-level officers in person.

Across Punjab's voter registry, the proportion of women recorded per thousand men climbed from 906 in the draft version released on 13 August to 937 by the time the finalised rolls were published on 12 October — a 31-point uptick attributed to the Summary Intensive Revision exercise.