SIR hearings completed in 122 Assembly constituencies in Kerala; over 39,000 names deleted permanently

Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Electoral Officer Rathan U Kelkar on Friday said that the hearing of those left out of the Draft SIR (special intensive revision) list has been completed in 122 Assembly constituencies. Of the constituencies where hearings are yet to be completed, three are in North Kerala (Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur) and one in south (Kollam). 

Malappuram has the most number of constituencies where hearings are to be completed: Seven. Kozhikode has six constituencies where the hearings are incomplete at this stage. Peravur in Kannur has the largest number of hearings left to be conducted: 218. 

The final voters list of the SIR exercise will be published on February 21. "The highest priority has been given to revise the voters' list by meticulously conducting the hearing of all those who have been served notices and ensuring that not a single voter is denied of her rights," the CEO said.

At this stage of the hearing process, 39,297 names have been removed from the voters' list. Of this, 4217 had died during the enumeration stage, 1630 have foreign citizenship, and 33,450 had permanently shifted their residence out of Kerala. "These figures, too, are subject to change as the updation process is still on," the CEO said.

When the SIR Draft List was published on December 23 last year, 24,08,503 (twenty-four lakh eight thousand five hundred and three) names were removed from the voters' list. 

The deleted names came under the ASD (Absent, Shifted, and Dead) list. Among this, the dead accounted for nearly 6.5 lakh, and the duplicates or names that appeared more than once in the existing electoral roll were 1.36 lakh. Therefore, the effective exclusion would be just about 19 lakh.

The SIR draft list of the Election Commission of India (ECI) had 2,54,42,352 voters.

Here is the list of Assembly constituencies and the number of hearings left to be completed in each of them.