As Assembly elections approach in Uttar Pradesh, a sobering question arises — is it going to be a free and fair election? As it is, the recent elections in West Bengal have cast a shadow on the reputation of India’s electoral system. The fairness of elections in UP raises a range of issues, from “old” ones such as the impartiality of the Election Commission and reliability of EVMs to more recent concerns, including suspicious alterations in the post-SIR voter lists, acceptance of mass deletion requests after the deadline, and the filing of unauthorised Form-7 objections. Here, we focus on the critical issue of “missing voters”.

Uttar Pradesh had an estimated adult population of 16.2 crore as of 1 March 2026. The final SIR voter list, dated April 2026, has 13.4 crore names (down from 15.4 crore pre-SIR). Thus, about 2.8 crore voters seem to be missing, or 17.3 per cent of the adult population. It could even be more, if duplicates or other “surplus names” are still lingering on the final list.…