Dead, shifted...: Kolkata draft voters’ list to shrink by 21%
Times of India | 9 December 2025
Kolkata: The names of more than 21% electors in Kolkata North and Kolkata South Lok Sabha constituencies whose names figured on the electoral rolls on Oct 27 will not be included in the draft list to be published on Dec 16 as part of the ongoing special intensive revision of voters' records.
Election Commission sources said — citing enumeration data from the SIR — the percentage of ASDD (absentee, shifted, dead and duplicate) voters in Kolkata is the highest among all districts in Bengal. EC will publish its draft list without the names of those voters and separate lists for each category will be put out later, the sources said.
The 2025 electoral rolls, which EC had "frozen" on Oct 27, have the names of 33.6 lakh voters in the two Lok Sabha constituencies in Kolkata. Of them, the ASDD voters account for a little over 7 lakh. "The numbers may increase as enumeration will continue till Dec 11," a senior EC official said.
Officials said the high percentage of ASDD voters is a matter of concern as it shows the annual summary revision of voters list is not done properly.
"As per the Oct 27 list, Kolkata North has 15,06,339 voters. Enumeration data compiled till Dec 7 shows 3,80,202 electors — 25.5% of the total — in the seven assembly segments of the constituency are in the ASDD category," an EC official said.
The seven assembly segments — all under district election officer (DEO) Kolkata North — are Chowringhee, Entally, Beleghata, Jorasanko, Shyampukur, Maniktala and Kashipur-Belgachhia. Among the seven, the highest percentage of ASDD voters is in Jorasanko — 36.4%.
Kolkata South, too, has seven assembly segments — Kolkata Port, Bhowanipore, Rashbehari, Ballygunge, Kasba, Behala Purba and Behala Paschim. The first four are under DEO Kolkata South and the rest under DEO South 24 Parganas.
"The assembly segments under DEO Kolkata South have an average of 22.4% ASDD voters, according to data compiled till Dec 7. The ones under DEO South 24 Parganas have 12.8% ASDD voters," the official said.
Kolkata Port, Bhowanipore, Rashbehari and Ballygunge assembly constituencies have 9,07,456 voters, according to the list "frozen" on Oct 27. Among them, 2,01,991 have been identified as ASDD voters.
The remaining segments have the names of 9,52,432 electors. Of them, 1,21,928 are ASDD voters.
The Kolkata Port assembly segment has the highest percentage of ASDD voters in Kolkata South — 23.6%.
"The high percentage of ASDD voters in the 11 assembly segments under the DEOs of Kolkata North and Kolkata South is not unexpected. We faced difficulties getting an adequate number of BLOs for the annual summary revision in the last few years. We had to manage with one-third of the BLOs required for the exercise and many of those who worked were not residents of the city," said an official in the office of the Bengal chief electoral officer.
"During the SIR, deploying adequate BLOs was EC's top priority," the official said.
The poll panel has asked electoral registration officers to verify data about dead voters from various sources such as the Janma-Mrityu Thathya portal and Registrar General of Births and Deaths.
EC has uploaded software, birth-date data and data on deactivated Aadhaar on the dashboards of EROs and DEOs to identify duplicate and dead voters.
"EC has two software tools — Demographically Similar Elector (DSE) and Photo Similar Elector (PSE) — to identify duplicate electors. DSE identifies duplicate electors by their names, names of their fathers/guardians and addresses. PSE identifies electors who look similar," the official said.