When the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the special intensive revision in Bihar last year, it mentioned the “inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants” as one of the motivations for the exercise.
In Karnataka, where SIR has deleted 9.97 million names in the final rolls , the authorities identified 716 foreign nationals for removal, including 545 Nepalese citizens in Bengaluru North, said an official from the state Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office. In Dakshina Kannada, electoral officials said, 40 foreign nationals were detected, including 17 from Nepal, six each from Australia and the United States, five from Canada, two from Britain, and one each from the Netherlands, South Africa, Ireland and Norway. On June 24, 2025, ECI announced the beginning of SIR in Bihar.
“Various reasons such as rapid urbanization, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, non-reporting of deaths and inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants have necessitated the conduct of an intensive revision so as to ensure integrity and preparation of error-free electoral rolls,” it said in a press note.
Uttara Kannada, as per district officials, had 22 detections, involving citizens of Nepal, Pakistan, the United States and Bangladesh . In Udupi, 47 foreign nationals from countries including Nepal, the United States, Britain, France and Canada were detected, district election officerTK Swaroopa told reporters.
“Some people who possessed voter identity cards could not provide details of other documents, including school certificates and property records, during verification,” said an officer familiar with the exercise.
HT spoke to the CEOs of 26states and Union territories where SIR was completed or draft rolls published. Six gave a count of suspected foreigners. “States were not asked to collect this data separately. We also don’t have combined or state-wise data on this. If any such cases came up, they were placed under the ‘Others’ category in ASDDO.
Officials from 11 states responded.
Four said they didn’t maintain the data. Odisha said it found such cases but did not record a figure. “We did find suspected foreign nationals on the rolls but didn’t keep any figures,” an Odisha state official said. ECI said it never asked states for this data. But ECI has not asked them to provide these details,” a senior ECI official said.
