73 lakh names off the draft. 93 lakh must answer a notice.

Telangana’s draft roll is thinner by 73,39,235 names. Another 92,87,577 electors who are still on the draft must answer a notice. That is the Special Intensive Revision, reduced to two queues.

The Absent / Shifted / Dead / Duplicate list went up on the Chief Electoral Officer’s site this week. You pick a district, an Assembly seat, a part number. You get a name, an EPIC, a relative, and a reason: permanently shifted, dead, already registered, missing or absent. On Wednesday the list was in Telugu only. Anyone who cannot read the script was locked out of their own deletion. Booth-wise paper lists are also on ERO and AERO boards, panchayat and municipal boards, and polling stations.

Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudharsan Reddy’s office has published the split. Of the 73,39,235 people taken off the draft, 45,18,963 are marked permanently shifted, 11,25,546 untraceable or absent, 9,22,229 dead, 6,70,203 already enrolled, and 1,02,294 “others,” with no further explanation. The CEO says those ASDD cuts were declared with the approval of party booth-level agents. Approval by an agent is not the same as a visit that found a body, or a house, or a second EPIC. “Others” is a bin, not a reason.

The draft itself was published on 17 August. As of 10 August the State had 3,38,26,448 electors. Enumeration forms for 2,64,87,213 were digitised. That digitised number is the draft. The missing 73.39 lakh are the first queue. They may file Form 6, with the prescribed declaration, in the claims window that runs from 17 August to 16 September. Forms sit on voters.eci.gov.in. A deletion is not a final death certificate. It is a homework assignment with a date.

The second queue is larger and still on the roll. 60,50,918 electors have anomalies or logical discrepancies — name and age mismatches, mapping that does not fit. 32,36,659 could not be tied to the 2002 SIR. Together that is 92,87,577 people, about 35 percent of those who made the draft. Notices go through the booth-level officer, in a set format. Replies go back through the BLO. An ERO or assistant ERO can call the person. A personal hearing is not ruled out. Disposal runs to 15 October. The final roll is due on 19 October. The CEO has 119 EROs and 892 assistants and has asked the Commission for 500 to 1,000 more officers to finish in time.

These are not the same 73 lakh. One group is off the draft and must climb back. The other is on the draft and must defend the entry. A BLO who cannot explain a notice will turn a woman who has voted for twenty years into a file that lapses on 15 October. Urban BLOs, public explainers have already said, were less active in the mapping months than rural ones. A minor change from an initial to a full Aadhaar name is enough to trigger the letter.

3.38 crore electors, 35,985 booths, 35,985 BLOs, 3,590 supervisors, 49,018 party agents — the machine is huge. The output is a draft that dropped 21.7 percent of the names and put more than a third of the rest on notice. SIR is sold as a clean roll. A clean roll that needs 93 lakh explanations is a roll that has already accused its own voters. The list is online. The clock is 16 September for the deleted, 15 October for the noticed. Miss either date and the franchise is a memory.