Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Tuesday defended the Special Intensive Revision exercise for voter rolls, pointing to a deletion rate of around 14.5 per cent from the state's electoral register — a figure he characterised as higher than what opposition-governed states had recorded — and rejected the contention that the process had been carried out with any particular group of voters in mind.

Patel, posting on X, pushed back against the opposition's characterisation of the revision as a unilateral move to strike voters from the rolls, describing that portrayal as bearing no relation to the facts. He contended that the data pointed to a neutral process, with those removed from the rolls falling into three categories — people who had died, those who had relocated, and entries that appeared more than once — and said that keeping voter lists accurate underpins the integrity of any election.

Pointing to data from other states, Patel noted that voter rolls in Uttar Pradesh — a state under BJP administration — had seen approximately 2.05 crore names struck off. He also pointed to West Bengal's deletion data, noting that around 63 per cent of the names struck from the rolls there belonged to Hindu voters — a breakdown he put forward as evidence that the process had not been steered toward any particular community or electoral group.

Voter rolls, he argued, require regular maintenance — clearing out entries for those who have died or appear more than once, while also bringing in those who have newly qualified to vote. Patel characterised the Special Intensive Revision exercise as a formal procedure administered by the Election Commission, adding that the process operated with full transparency, and urged the public to examine the available information rather than accept unverified claims at face value. He argued that the integrity of electoral rolls forms the foundation on which genuinely free and fair voting depends.

Those remarks from the Chief Minister came on a day when BJP ballot returns across local body contests in the state produced a pronounced result — in Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation alone, 38 of the 44 available seats went to the party. Five of the seats went to Congress, with the remaining one claimed by an Independent candidate. Aam Aadmi Party, which had held one seat after the 2021 contest, came away without any representation this time around.

Patel went on to frame the vote tallies as a sign that the public backs both Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stewardship and the development platform his BJP has championed. Citing remarks from Union Home Minister Amit Shah following the vote count, Patel argued that the outcome demonstrated voters had turned away from what he characterised as the opposition's misleading approach and fact-free political messaging.

In a separate post, Patel added that BJP victories in Gujarat's local body contests — Gandhinagar among them — alongside by-election results elsewhere in the country pointed to continued public support for Prime Minister Modi. Pointing to the opposition's string of electoral setbacks in Gujarat, he urged both the Congress party and the INDIA bloc to examine why voters there had repeatedly turned against them, while maintaining that policies centred on development and governance had retained broad public backing.

Disputes over the Special Intensive Revision process have drawn objections from opposition figures, who point to names removed from voter registers and the knock-on effect this could have on those entitled to cast ballots. Periodic reviews of the electoral roll are carried out by the Election Commission, through which outdated entries are cleared away and newly qualified voters are brought onto the register.