Ghost voters? SIR deletions offer clue to Hyderabad’s chronic low turnout | Hyderabad News

Hyderabad: Were Hyderabad’s chronic low-turnout constituencies partly ‘ghost’ constituencies, carrying large numbers of electors who had shifted, died or were no longer traceable? The latest special intensive revision (SIR) data offers a clue: four of Telangana’s five constituencies with the highest absentee, shifted, dead and duplicate (ASDD) deletion rates had recorded less than 50% turnout in the 2023 assembly election.The overlap is most visible in Greater Hyderabad, where constituencies that struggled to bring even half their electors to the polling stations have now lost more than four in every 10 names from their pre-SIR rolls.Low turnout, high deletionsMusheerabad tops the state’s ASDD table with 45.1%, against the 2023 turnout of 50.8%. Malakpet follows with 44.7% ASDD and had polled just 41.5% in 2023. LB Nagar with 44.4% ASDD, recorded 49.7% turnout, while Jubilee Hills has 44.1% ASDD against 47.5% turnout. Secunderabad Cantonment, with 42.7% ASDD, had recorded 49.6%.The pattern extends beyond the top five. Yakutpura, which recorded only 39.7% turnout in the 2023 polls, now has 41.33% ASDD. Serilingampally recorded 48.9% turnout and now has a 42.6% deletion rate.The contrast within Rangareddy is sharper. Chevella and Ibrahimpatnam recorded 75.1% and 75.8% turnout, respectively, in 2023, while their ASDD rates were much lower at 20.3% and 24.7%.Officials see a possible turnout linkGHMC commissioner RV Karnan had earlier said low polling percentages in assembly, Parliament and civic elections could partly be attributed to names of ASDD electors remaining on the rolls and now in the draft they have been cleaned up.The district-level numbers support further scrutiny. Hyderabad recorded about 48% turnout in the 2023 assembly election and now has a 40.9% ASDD rate. Medchal-Malkajgiri had 56.5% turnout and 35.9% ASDD, while the six Greater Hyderabad constituencies in Rangareddy recorded about 56.9% turnout and now have a combined ASDD rate of around 38.1%.The overlap, however, does not establish that all those deleted in 2026 were ineligible or absent during earlier elections. An elector classified as shifted now could have been resident and eligible in 2023. The SIR figures, therefore, point to a possible explanation for Hyderabad’s historically low turnout rather than proof that previous rolls were filled with ‘ghost voters’.