The names of more than two crore persons were removed from Maharashtra’s draft voter list on Monday as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. The electors excluded from the draft account for 21.1% of the state’s previous voter base.In Delhi, 47.7 lakh names were deleted from the draft voter list. The names account for 33% of the Union Territory’s electorate.Deletions in Maharashtra, DelhiThose removed from the voter list were marked as either permanently shifted, deceased, absent, duplicate entries or placed under the “other” category, which includes those who refused to fill the enumeration form.In Maharashtra, Pune district had the highest number of deletions at 28.6 lakh, followed by Thane with 28.5 lakh and Mumbai Suburban with 26.5 lakh.In the national capital, Tughlakabad had the highest deletions at 52.1%.In both states, voters can file claims and objections against their exclusion from the draft list between August 31 and September 30. The appeals will be heard by October 29. The final electoral roll will be published on November 4.Maharashtra and Delhi are among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR.In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories, including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.Crores of names removedDuring the third phase, more than six crore names have been deleted from draft lists.In Karnataka, more than one crore names, or 19% of the electorate, were removed. In Haryana, 16% of the voters, or more than 24 lakh persons, were deleted. In Andhra Pradesh, 10.8% of the electorate, or more than 22 lakh names, were excluded.Earlier in July, more than 22 lakh names were removed from the voter lists of four states Odisha, Manipur, Mizoram and Sikkim. The names accounted for 6.1% of the voters in the states’ earlier electoral rolls.In West Bengal, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed from the electoral rolls. Ahead of the Assembly elections in April, about 38 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before the tribunals.On August 25, the Supreme Court was told that only seven lakh out of 38 lakh appeals before the tribunals in West Bengal were against deletions from the electoral rolls. The remaining 31 lakh applications were challenging inclusion in the list.In nearly 83,000 appeals that were disposed of in West Bengal, tribunals allowed voters to be included in the electoral rolls in more than 75,000 cases. This meant that more than 90% of the decided appeals had been ruled in favour of the voters, the court was informed.In Bihar, the exercise took place between July 2025 and September 2025 ahead of the Assembly elections in November 2025. Forty-seven lakh voters in the state were excluded from the final electoral roll.In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision, but said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Anamika Pathak.Also read: Scroll’s SIR experience is a microcosm of what urban India is facingBihar to Bengal, the great Indian disenfranchisement now has the Supreme Court’s approval