Punjab's electoral rolls shed approximately 13.60 lakh entries — a contraction of around 6.34 percent — following the conclusion of a special intensive revision exercise, with the updated tallies published on Monday. Spanning all 117 assembly constituencies, the voter rolls shed roughly 130,000 names following the revision exercise, bringing the total electorate down to just above 2.01 crore from the 2.14 crore recorded on June 9.

Broken down by gender registration, the completed electoral roll lists just over 1.03 crore male voters alongside nearly 97.24 lakh female voters, with a further 506 electors recorded under the third-gender category.

When the draft rolls appeared on 13 August, they carried the names of roughly 1.94 crore electors — a total shaped by the removal of over 20.66 lakh entries that had featured in the pre-SIR voter count. Among the entries removed, roughly 9.44 lakh voters (4.40%) had relocated on a permanent basis, while 5.74 lakh (2.68%) were recorded as having died, a further 4.12 lakh (1.92%) could not be traced at their registered addresses, and 1.19 lakh (0.56%) were found to appear more than once on the rolls.

The updated voter rolls amount to a housekeeping exercise rather than a removal of qualified electors, Punjab's chief electoral officer Anindita Mitra indicated in her statement on the matter.

During that exercise, roughly 7.97 lakh voters were added to the rolls, a total that included 2.93 lakh young people casting ballots for the first time at ages 18 and 19, pushing the net gain to 7.06 lakh above the draft baseline of close to 1.94 crore registered voters. Of the 35.49 lakh electors who had received notices, verification proceedings found 86,038 to be ineligible for inclusion on the rolls, with supporting documentary evidence mandated as a condition for each removal, Mitra stated.

Among those who received notices were approximately 1.28 million voters whose details had not been mapped and whose records were then checked against the Special Intensive Revision data from 2003. 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 referenced elsewhere.

The registered voter pool grew by 3.5 percent. Spanning a pool of 1.94 crore registered voters, the process opened to submissions of claims and objections, with the revision exercise having got under way on 25 June. Voter rolls in draft form became available on 13 August, with a window for claims and objections running until 12 September. That window for serving notice and arranging disposal ran through to 8 October.

Delegates from AAP, Congress, BJP, and SAD each offered their endorsement of how Mitra handled the exercise, with all four parties indicating they had no reservations about the way the process unfolded. The AAP's legal representative, Ferry Sofat, noted that no political party in Punjab had raised allegations of electoral misconduct — drawing a comparison to the situation that had arisen in West Bengal.

Mitra noted that the tally of polling stations had grown from 24,453 to 25,332, a move aimed at making voting more accessible, with all parties reported to have expressed satisfaction with the arrangement. Covering service voters, the updated electoral register — with an eligibility cutoff of 1 October — was released that same Monday.

Those whose names were absent from the finalised voter rolls, along with first-time registrants, retain the option of submitting a Form 6 application — either through the ECINET app or by visiting their booth-level officer in person — Mitra noted. Between the draft electoral rolls released on 13 August and the finalised version published on 13 October, Punjab's ratio of female to male registered voters climbed from 906 women per 1,000 men to 937 — a 31-point gain that followed the completion of the Special Intensive Revision.