Hyderabad ASDD deletions equal 89% of 2023 turnout, study finds
HYDERABAD: Deletions under the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD) category in Hyderabad have reached 19.41 lakh, equivalent to 89% of the votes polled in the 2023 Assembly election, according to an analysis by Sabar Institute.
The study found that deletions exceeded the total votes polled in two Assembly constituencies. Malakpet recorded 1.47 lakh deletions against 1.32 lakh votes polled in 2023, while Yakutpura recorded 1.54 lakh deletions against about 1.40 lakh votes polled.
The comparison is intended to show the scale of the deletions and does not mean that all deleted electors would have voted in the 2023 election. Independent reporting on the study has also confirmed the two constituency-level comparisons.
Permanently shifted voters account for nearly seven in 10 deletions
According to the Sabar Institute analysis, 69.3% of the deleted names were classified as “permanently shifted”. Another 17.5% were marked as untraceable or absent.
Only 8.1% of the deletions were recorded under the death category, while 5.1% were classified as voters already enrolled elsewhere. The state-wide ASDD data released by the Telangana chief electoral officer similarly lists permanently shifted, absent or untraceable, dead and duplicate categories.
The study said about 92% of those deleted were non-death cases, which it describes as deletions involving living electors.
An average of more than 500 voters were deleted from each polling booth in Hyderabad, according to the analysis.
Yakutpura accounts for eight of 10 biggest deletion booths
The highest booth-level deletions were concentrated in Yakutpura, the study found. Booth 297 recorded 1,069 deletions, followed by Booth 283 with 1,026 and Booth 282 with 964.
Booth 302 recorded 945 deletions, Booth 303 had 902 and Booth 298 had 882. Nampally’s Booth 256 recorded 904 deletions, while Chandrayangutta’s Booth 263 recorded 845.
Eight of the 10 booths with the highest number of deletions were in Yakutpura, according to the analysis.
The gender analysis found that 9.28 lakh women were among the deleted electors. At Yakutpura’s Booth 297, 535 women were deleted, of whom 527 were classified under non-death categories.
The study was prepared through extraction, analysis and classification of electoral-roll data by Sabir Ahamed, Souptik Halder and Ashin Chakraborty. Sabar Institute has separately identified Ahamed as its lead, Halder as research associate and Chakraborty as head of research.
The analysis also examined names in the deleted rolls. It found that names identified as Muslim accounted for 40.7% of all deletions in Hyderabad.
The share was higher in some constituencies, reaching 85.9% in Bahadurpura, 72.4% in Chandrayangutta and 62.4% in Charminar.
The study cautioned that these figures represent the share of deleted names identified as Muslim and should not be interpreted as a religion-wise deletion rate. A separate analysis of the Election Commission’s published lists also estimated that around 40% of Hyderabad’s deleted names were Muslim names.
The Telangana draft electoral roll was published on August 17 following the Special Intensive Revision exercise. State data showed 73.39 lakh electors across Telangana under the ASDD category, including 45.18 lakh classified as permanently shifted, 11.25 lakh as absent or untraceable and 9.22 lakh as dead.
