Hyderabad: In 2023, Jaffer Hussain Meraj of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) won the Yakutpura Assembly constituency with 46,153 votes, very narrowly defeating Amjed Ullah Khan of the Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT), who polled 45,275 votes. The margin was 878 votes, so small, in fact, that it was the AIMIM’s smallest victory anywhere in their Old City stronghold that year.
N Veerendra Babu Yadav of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) polled 22,354 votes and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) 15,516. Yakutpura also recorded the lowest turnout in Telangana in 2023, with a total of 1,40,434 votes cast, according to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).
That number is significant because those deleted from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) under the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD) category in the constituency is 14,548 higher than the entire votes polled.
Of the 1,54,982 of voters likely to be deleted in Yakutpura from the draft SIR roll, an estimated 89,000, or 57 out of every 100, have Muslim names. It is the third-largest in the constituencies that come under Hyderabad, according to an analysis by Siasat.com.
Yakutpura went into the SIR with a total electorate of 3,74,948, with 2,19,966 making it on the draft list post the exercise. This translates to 41 in every 100 names being left off, which is the steepest of the seven Old City Assembly constituencies, Siasat.com’s analysis shows.
In the ASDD category, shifted account for 1,03,548 people flagged for deletion. Among them, an estimated 54,000 – or 53 in every 100 – have Muslim names. Of the 25,008 recorded as absent, an estimated 15,000 – 61 in every 100 – carry Muslim names. Among 14,566 marked as dead, the Muslim-name estimate is 10,000, which is 65 per cent of them.
However, it is the duplicate category that raises an alarm. Among 11,860 marked as duplicate, an estimated 8,000 are those with Muslim names, which is a whopping 84 per cent. Yakutpura’s duplicate column is also the largest in Hyderabad in absolute number.
It is the middle-aged voters who bear the brunt of being on Yakutpura’s ASDD list, with the largest age group likely to be deleted from the draft roll being those aged 35 to 44, which constitute 47,977 voters, according to Siasat.com’s analysis.
This is followed by people aged 45 to 59 making up 42,332 voters and those aged 25 to 34 accounting for 28,216. Those above 60 account for 31,179, and the youngest (18 to 24 year olds), constituting 5,278 on the ASDD list.
When seen together, 76,193 of those left off the draft roll – just under half the list – are aged between 25 and 44.
When looking at the age-wise categorisation, among those aged 25 to 34, as many as 20,437 are marked shifted, 5,008 are absent, 2,324 duplicate and 447 are dead. Among those aged 35 to 44, it is 34,538 shifted, 8,145 absent, 3,842 duplicate and 1,452 dead. In the 45 to 59 age band, 28,601 are listed as shifted, 6,608 absent, 3,421 duplicate and 3,702 dead.
Shifted accounts for 70 in every 100 for ages 25 to 44, according to Siasat.com’s analysis.
Of the over 5,200 electors aged 18 to 24 on the excluded list, 3,506 are marked shifted and 1,009 are absent. For people above the age of 60, as many as 16,466 are marked as shifted and 4,238 are absent, but 8,922 are recorded as dead, which is 29 in every 100 and 61 per cent of all death entries in the constituency.
The duplicate category is particularly noticeable in Yakutpura. Most of the entries are in the working-age groups, with 3,842 people aged 35 to 44 listed as duplicates.
This category also has the highest share of Muslim names in Yakutpura. Around 84 per cent of the duplicate entries have Muslim names, compared with 57 per cent across all four deletion categories.
Yakutpura also has the highest number of duplicate entries among all Hyderabad Assembly constituencies.
The 1.54 voters likely being deleted for being on the ASDD list have political ramifications. A shift of a few hundred names changes who wins the seat, given how close the margin was in 2023.
Those who are on the ASDD list will not receive notices, unlike unmapped electors or those flagged for anomalies. However, electors left off the draft roll can file a claim until September 16. Hearings run to October 15, which means that they can get themselves enrolled in the final list that is due on October 19.
Estimates in this report come from a name-based model applied to the Election Commission’s published lists. Electoral rolls carry no religion column, as it is against the law of the country. The data Siasat.com presented carries a margin of error.
(This is Part 5 of a multi-part series on the analysis of the Telangana and Hyderabad SIR. Click to read Part 3 and Part 4. Stay tuned as we publish more in the coming days)
This post was last modified on September 7, 2026 2:39 pm