59% of Bengaluru voters facing exclusion risk are from BJP-held seats: SIR data

Mangalore Today News Network

Bengaluru, Aug 19, 2026: Nearly three-fifths of voters in Bengaluru who have been flagged under the Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others (ASDDO) category belong to Assembly constituencies represented by BJP MLAs, according to data released by the Election Commission as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

A total of 46.88 lakh voters in Bengaluru have been included in the ASDDO list, accounting for nearly 45% of the city’s 1.03 crore voters.

Across Karnataka, the ASDDO list comprises 1.07 crore voters, or 19.47% of the 5.54 crore electors on the rolls before the SIR enumeration began. The enumeration exercise formally concluded on August 17.

Bengaluru has 28 Assembly constituencies, including Anekal. The BJP currently holds 15 seats, while the Congress has 12. In Yeshwanthpur, MLA S.T. Somashekhar is currently unattached after being expelled from the BJP.

The 15 BJP-held constituencies account for 27.69 lakh voters on the ASDDO list, while the 12 Congress-held constituencies have 16.79 lakh such voters.

Bangalore South, represented by BJP MLA M. Krishnappa, recorded the highest ASDDO count, with 3.63 lakh voters. Shivajinagar, represented by Food and Civil Supplies Minister Rizwan Arshad of the Congress, recorded the lowest at 81,236.

BJP MLA S. Suresh Kumar said the high ASDDO numbers indicated that Bengaluru’s electoral rolls may have been “inflated”.

“After every election, Bengaluru was flagged for low voter turnout. I kept saying that the rolls were inflated, and the turnout was always around 80 per cent,” said Kumar, the Rajajinagar MLA, where more than one lakh voters are on the ASDDO list.

Congress MLA Dinesh Gundu Rao, whose Gandhinagar constituency has 1.12 lakh voters on the ASDDO list, expressed concern over the figures.

“This is a big drop. We always assume that 20-25 per cent of the voter list is flawed. But this is wider than what we thought. We have to wait and watch,” he said.

The draft electoral rolls prepared following the SIR exercise will be published on August 24. Citizens can submit claims and objections until September 23, while the final electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on October 27.

There is, however, no official clarity on whether the “logical discrepancy” category introduced during the SIR exercise in West Bengal will also be applied in Karnataka.

If the category is introduced, even voters included in the draft rolls who have successfully mapped themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls could receive notices over issues such as spelling differences or age gaps of less than 15 years between mothers and their children.