Between January 6 and March 6, the state machinery of Uttar Pradesh processed 70,69,810 requests from people asking to be put on the voting lists. This flood of Form-6 paperwork happened while officials also weighed 2,68,682 requests to scrub names off the rolls. These numbers come from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a period where the state tries to decide who is real enough to vote.
Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa stated that the draft list shown in January already had 12.55 crore names on it. To get this list "clean," the state sent out notices to 3.26 crore people whose details looked shaky or thin. The recent 70 lakh new claims follow a massive purge where the voter list shrank by 19% after nearly 29 million names were cut away.
"The draft electoral roll published on January 6 contained 12.55 crore voters… notices were issued to 3.26 crore voters whose details required verification." — Navdeep Rinwa, CEO.
The Paperwork of the State
The state sorts people into numbered buckets. While most focus on new names, the friction of keeping names off the list remains constant. From late October to early March, the total pile of Form-7 (deletion) requests reached 3,18,140.
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| Form Type | Purpose | Count (Jan 6 - Mar 6) | Gender Lean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form 6 | New Names | 7,06,9810 | Unspecified |
| Form 7 | Deletions | 2,68,682 | More Men (1.58L) |
| Form 8 | Fixing Errors | 16,33,578 | N/A |
Gender Gaps: In the deletion pile, 1,58,027 requests targeted men, while 1,10,645 targeted women. Only 10 requests concerned the third gender.
Fixing Mistakes: Most of the work was just fixing bad data. Over 14.8 lakh people filed Form-8 just to change small errors in their entries, while 1.12 lakh changed their living address.
The Physical Card: About 31,602 people asked for new EPIC cards because their old ones were lost or broken.
Political Friction and Verified Grievances
The process is not just a quiet hum of computers; it is a conflict of interests. Political parties watched the list-making with varying levels of distrust. During this revision, the state took in 92 complaints about how the lists were being handled.
The Samajwadi Party was the loudest, filing 78 of those complaints. The Bharatiya Janata Party followed with 8, and the Aam Aadmi Party filed 1. Official voices say all these "frictions" have been "resolved," though the word resolved often just means the paperwork reached its final box.
Background: The Shrinking Roll
The current rush to add names is a response to the Jan 6 draft roll which showed a jagged drop in the number of voters. The list was pruned of 28.9 million names before this current addition phase started, leaving a lopsided count of 6.88 crore men and 5.67 crore women.
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This "cleaning" of the books is a recurring ritual. The state uses tools like 'Book a call with BLO' to make the bureaucracy feel more like a service, yet the sheer scale of 3.26 crore verification notices suggests a system that is constantly unsure of its own data. The state sits at the top of the National Grievance Service Portal ratings for February, a badge of efficiency in a state where millions of names can appear or vanish in a single season.