2.45 Crore Urban Voters Missing in UP: Major Challenge for BJP in Poll Roll Revision

The BJP is facing a growing concern in Uttar Pradesh as a massive 2.45 crore urban voters appear to be missing from electoral rolls during the state’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. The trend is particularly alarming because the party has historically drawn significant strength from urban constituencies.

Under the revised rules, voters can stay registered in only one location. With stricter checks on duplicate entries, many urban residents have chosen to retain their voter registration in their ancestral villages, driven largely by issues related to land records and their direct involvement in Panchayat polls. As a result, their names are disappearing from city voter lists, sharply reducing the urban vote pool.

This decline is visible across major UP cities — including Lucknow, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Agra, Meerut and Saharanpur. Around 17.7% of SIR forms have not been returned, translating to approximately 2.45 crore voters missing from enumeration rolls.

Early estimates show significant deletions:

• Ayodhya: ~4,100 voters

• Lucknow: ~2.2 lakh

• Prayagraj: ~2.4 lakh (highest), particularly in Allahabad North, South and Cantonment

• Ghaziabad: ~1.6 lakh

• Saharanpur: ~1.4 lakh

Officials say that no voter revision exercise in the past two decades has been conducted with such rigour. Migration outside Uttar Pradesh, deaths, and duplicate or fake entries account for part of the deletion surge. But BJP leaders are particularly concerned about intentional choices by urban voters to remain enrolled in their native villages.

Senior leaders including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the state BJP president and general secretary have directed MLAs, MPs and office-bearers to urgently mobilise and ensure urban voters complete the SIR process. The exercise is now being monitored at the highest levels.

With nearly 15–18% of UP’s total voters currently missing from updated rolls, the Election Commission is considering extending the deadline by one week to allow more people to submit their forms.

For the BJP, the situation poses a strategic challenge: if the trend persists, the party’s urban vote base — crucial in past electoral victories — may weaken significantly ahead of the next polls.