Aaditya Thackeray has questioned the Election Commission of India over an alleged fall of 790,364 in Maharashtra’s registered voters between two communications issued during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, while also raising concerns about voters missing from both the draft roll and the list of absent, shifted, dead or duplicate electors.
The Shiv Sena UBT leader said the voter count stood at 98,644,413 in an Election Commission communication received on May 26, 2026, but fell to 97,854,049 in another communication received on August 31. He asked where the 790,364 voters had gone and whether they had been classified as duplicates, shifted voters or “ghost voters”.
Thackeray said his party had initially supported the revision exercise because it was intended to identify duplicate and allegedly bogus entries. According to him, Booth Level Agents were deployed across Maharashtra and nearly 100 per cent of the party’s agents were present in Mumbai to accompany Booth Level Officers during door-to-door enumeration.
He also claimed that five lakh people whose names appeared in the electoral rolls used for the Lok Sabha, Maharashtra Assembly and Mumbai civic elections were absent from both the Special Intensive Revision draft roll and the ASDD list. The claim raises a question about how records from different elections are being reconciled during the current revision process. The supplied report did not include an independent verification of the allegation or a response from the Election Commission.
Thackeray cited several examples to support his concerns. He said his party had identified 24,500 allegedly fake or bogus voters in the Worli Assembly constituency during its review of the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly electoral roll. He further claimed that, out of 1.31 crore voters in Mumbai, the party had flagged 30 lakh entries over alleged duplicate or multiple registrations and addresses where, he said, no houses existed. He said a list of 17 lakh allegedly bogus voters had been submitted to the Election Commission while studying the roll for the Mumbai civic elections.
The presentation also referred to Bhiwandi East, where Thackeray said 373,659 voters were registered and 191,691 cast ballots in the 2024 Assembly election, while the SIR draft roll contained 191,446 voters. He questioned whether the difference represented duplicate entries, voters who had shifted elsewhere or other categories of deletion, and said such voters should appear either in the draft roll or the ASDD list.
In Mahim, he alleged that around 900 voters with electoral records dating back to 2002 were facing difficulties because their details were not being mapped by the software. According to his account, the Election Commission issued notices asking some of them to establish their eligibility and residence in India, despite their names appearing in earlier and current electoral records. He also alleged that some Booth Level Officers and Booth Level Agents had not reached voters before they were marked as unmarked or absent.
The allegations place the administrative process of enumeration, software-based record mapping and list reconciliation at the centre of the dispute. The immediate next step is clarification of the differences between the May and August voter counts, and of how voters appearing in earlier electoral rolls are being treated in the SIR draft and ASDD lists.
