Nearly 19.4L Hyderabad voters marked

The Telangana Special Intensive Revision has put 19,41,444 electors in Hyderabad district into the deletion pool on the draft rolls, making the city the single biggest concentration of removals in the state. State data cited by Telangana Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudharsan Reddy showed 73,39,235 names were deleted statewide when the draft rolls were published on August 17. A separate analysis by the Kolkata-based Sabar Institute said 40.7% of the Hyderabad names marked for deletion appeared to be Muslim, adding a communal dimension to a process that is already politically contentious. The numbers matter because Hyderabad has 15 Assembly constituencies and several are held by the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, whose support base is concentrated in the old city. Sabar Institute said the deletions in every Hyderabad constituency were larger than the winning margin recorded in the 2023 Assembly election, and in Malakpet and Yakutpura they were larger than the total votes polled that year. Those findings have been circulated by opposition voices and community groups as evidence that the draft roll needs close scrutiny before it is finalized. (siasat.com) ### Where does the 19.4 lakh figure come from? Telangana Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudharsan Reddy’s office published district-level draft roll figures showing Hyderabad with 19,41,444 deletions, according to reports that cited the official release. The same data put total deletions across Telangana at 73,39,235 after the enumeration phase of the 2026 Special Intensive Revision. The draft electoral rolls were published on August 17 after house-to-house enumeration that the CEO’s schedule says ran from June 25 to August 10. (theprint.in) The Election Commission of India ordered the 2026 Special Intensive Revision in multiple states and union territories under its constitutional and statutory powers, according to an ECI press note dated May 31. Telangana’s CEO website says the process is now in the claims-and-objections stage. ### How were these names classified for deletion? The Telangana CEO portal lists an “Absent / Shifted / Dead and Duplicate” category, commonly shortened to ASDD, alongside the SIR draft rolls. (siasat.com) Hyderabad Mail, citing the Sabar Institute’s review of the published records, said the 19.41 lakh Hyderabad deletions were under that ASDD bucket. That means the current controversy is about names placed in the draft deletion list, not a final roll that is already closed to correction. (eci.gov.in) The Election Commission’s voter services portal says voters can seek deletion through Form 7 and corrections through other prescribed forms, while Telangana’s SIR schedule provides a separate claims-and-objections window for the draft exercise. In practice, that gives affected electors a formal route to challenge omissions before the final publication. ### What is behind the claim about Muslim names? Sabar Institute said 40.7% of the 19,41,444 Hyderabad deletions were names that appeared Muslim, according to reports by The Print, The Quint and others citing the analysis. (ceotelangana.nic.in) Siasat.com separately reported that about 7.77 lakh of the flagged names in Hyderabad carried Muslim names based on its reading of the Election Commission’s published lists. Neither figure, as described in those reports, amounts to an official Election Commission religious classification; it is an external analysis of names in the deletion lists. (voters.eci.gov.in) Deccan Herald reported that the share varied sharply by constituency, from 12.1% in Secunderabad Cantonment to 85.9% in Bahadurpura. That constituency-level spread has become central to the argument by critics who say the draft needs more transparency and case-by-case review. ### What have political leaders said? (theprint.in) AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi said on September 2 that voters whose names were missing from the draft electoral roll should immediately file Form 6 and should not panic, according to Deccan Chronicle. The report said Owaisi told voters AIMIM was committed to ensuring that every genuine voter’s name was included in the final roll. (deccanherald.com) Owaisi has criticized the broader SIR exercise for months. In earlier remarks reported by multiple outlets, he said the process could create a “permanent class of excluded Indians” and disproportionately affect Muslims, women, migrants and poorer voters. Those comments predated the Hyderabad-specific 19.4 lakh analysis but help explain why the district figures drew immediate political attention. (deccanchronicle.com) ### What happens before the rolls become final? The Telangana CEO’s published schedule says claims and objections can be filed from August 17 to September 16, with disposal running until October 15. The same schedule sets October 19, 2026, as the date for final roll publication. That timeline means the Hyderabad deletion figures now in circulation are draft-stage numbers that can still change through hearings, corrections and accepted claims. (ceotelangana.nic.in) (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)