CHENNAI: Nearly one in three voters in Chennai have been removed from the draft electoral roll released on Friday as part of the Special Intensive Revision, triggering concerns over the scale of deletions ahead of the next electoral cycle.
According to the draft roll data, the city’s electorate has fallen from about 40.04 lakh voters as on October 27, 2025, to 25.79 lakh as on December 19, reflecting an overall reduction of 35.6 per cent.
District Election Officer J Kumaragurubaran attributed the deletion of 14.25 lakh voters to deaths, voters being untraceable or absent, permanent migration, duplicate enrolments and a small number of other reasons.
Among the Assembly constituencies, Anna Nagar recorded the steepest decline of 42.2 per cent, with the number of voters in the draft roll dropping to 1,62,135 from 2,80,422 in the previous list.
This was followed by T Nagar at about 40.8 per cent, Thousand Lights at 40.7 per cent, Villivakkam at 40.6 per cent and Velachery at around 40.2 per cent. RK Nagar recorded the lowest decline of 24 per cent, with the electorate reducing to 1.78 lakh from 2.35 lakh.
The constituencywise breakup of deletions reveals that Velachery recorded the highest number of voters classified as permanently shifted, at 1.10 lakh, and also saw the largest number of deletions attributed to deaths, with 13,429 names removed. Kolathur reported the highest number of voters marked untraceable or absent, with 8,812 names deleted.
In duplicate entries, where voters were found to be already enrolled elsewhere, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar topped the list, with 1,869 such cases identified during the revision exercise.