Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari today said the number of electors in the city has come down by more than 50 per cent under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, writing to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to demand full transparency in the exercise.In a letter to CEO Prema Puri, a copy of which was released to The Tribune, Tewari said as per the latest information available to him, Chandigarh had 6,59,805 electors at the time of the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Of these, only 3,02,000 electors have been retained in the SIR rolls without scrutiny, as per the last SIR-2026 meeting held on August 14 at 4 pm at the Deputy Commissioner’s office, Chandigarh. He said he understood that 1,38,070 notices had also been issued in this regard.“My letter to CEO Chandigarh demanding full transparency in the SIR process as the number of electors in Chandigarh have come down by more than 50 per cent,” Tewari said.In his letter, Tewari sought elector-wise details of every name deleted from the rolls, including the name of the elector, ward and booth number, and the specific reason for deletion. He asked that the details cover deletions made both before the SIR process and during the ongoing SIR exercise.He also sought a separate list of all electors issued notices, giving the name of the elector, ward and booth number, the date and reason for issuance of the notice, and the present status of each notice, including whether a response has been received and whether further action has been taken.The MP had first raised the issue of large-scale deletions on August 5, citing an Election Commission ward-wise chart as on August 2. That chart had put the total electors in the draft roll at 4,50,282, against 6,59,805 in the 2024 General Election — a net deletion of 2,09,523 voters, or 31.76 per cent overall, with the average deletion across the city’s 35 wards at 33.72 per cent. The chart had also listed 66,145 electors in the ASDD (Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate) category.Ward 6 had recorded the highest deletion at 52.76 per cent, followed by Ward 24 (46.08 per cent), Ward 30 (45.48 per cent), Ward 12 (42.93 per cent), Ward 18 (42.89 per cent) and Ward 33 (42.78 per cent).The figures now cited by Tewari from the August 14 meeting are drawn from a different category — electors “retained without scrutiny” — rather than the total draft roll released on August 2. Adding the 3,02,000 electors retained without scrutiny to the 1,38,070 who have received notices gives a total of 4,40,070, still lower than the 4,50,282 electors recorded in the August 2 draft, indicating that scrutiny of the remaining electors may still be under way.The draft electoral roll remains subject to the prescribed claims and objections process before the final electoral roll is published.