Fact checkSIR
Shah's '3 crore infiltrators': the number matches the rolls' 'absent' group, but no record we opened shows those voters are Bangladeshi
The Home Minister said about 3 crore of the 13 crore names struck off in the voter-list revision were Bangladeshi infiltrators. The official grounds for removal are death, shifting, duplication and being untraceable; none is nationality.
The claim
Of the 13 crore names struck off in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), about 6.15 crore had shifted, nearly 3 crore were dead, about 1 crore were duplicates and the remaining 3 crore were Bangladeshi infiltrators.
Claim by: Amit Shah, Union Home Minister
Seen on: Speech at a BJP rally, Hyderabad (November 2, 2026); still being argued over, first seen November 2, 2026
Verdict: Misleading
- True
- Mostly true
- Misleading
- False
What we found
Amit Shah’s claim is misleading. At a rally in Hyderabad on November 2, 2026, the Home Minister rejected the opposition’s charge that 13 crore voters were deleted, and split the figure into about 6.15 crore who had shifted, nearly 3 crore dead, about 1 crore duplicates and 3 crore “Bangladeshi infiltrators”.
The first three groups match the categories the Election Commission uses. The fourth does not. The Commission’s own breakdown, as reported, lists about 3 crore voters as absent or untraceable, which is almost exactly Shah’s number. Being untraceable after repeated visits does not show that a person is a foreign national, and none of the official papers we opened gives a count of Bangladeshi nationals among the names.
Shah's split and the official grounds
The evidence
What Shah said
Reports of the Hyderabad rally say Shah told the crowd that of the 13 crore names Congress and Rahul Gandhi say were struck off, over 6 crore had moved to other places, nearly 3 crore were dead, about 1 crore were duplicates, and the remaining 3 crore were Bangladeshi infiltrators who should all be removed from the rolls. The reports give his words in indirect speech, and they differ slightly on the shifted figure (6.15 crore in two of them). He called the INDIA bloc’s earlier Delhi rally a “Save the Infiltrators Rally”.
The official grounds do not include nationality
A written reply by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal in the Lok Sabha, issued by PIB on July 25, 2026, says the Commission removes names only after verification by booth-level officers, on four grounds: death, permanent shifting, duplicate entries and electors untraceable after repeated visits. It lists at least two or three visits before a voter is treated as untraceable, a draft roll, a claims and objections period, and appeals. The release gives no counts and does not mention infiltrators.
Where the 3 crore comes from
A report of the Commission’s statement on October 2, 2026, says the roughly 13 crore figure covers voters marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate in the draft rolls, not names deleted from the final rolls. It gives about 2.8 crore dead, about 3 crore absent or untraceable, about 6.3 crore shifted and nearly 1 crore at more than one place. Shah’s third figure sits in the same place as the “absent” group. The Commission has also said that only Indian citizens can be registered as voters and that the revision aims to remove foreigners among other ineligible entries, so foreign nationals are a possible reason for a removal. It has not, in what we could open, said how many were found.
No published count of infiltrators
Reports of the rally cite a Home Ministry reply under the Right to Information Act, in January, saying it keeps no central data on infiltrators, and a survey of six states and Union Territories that found about 1,600 suspected foreigners among 9.86 crore voters. We could not open either source. Congress leaders asked Shah to show the names and the record; the reports note that no dataset behind the 3 crore figure has been published.
Why this claim spread
The 13 crore figure has been the centre of the dispute over the revision since the draft rolls came out, and the Commission has said it is misleading because it counts flagged names, not final deletions. Shah’s reply gave the ruling side a number of its own, and the BJP has since defended it in terms of population change in border districts. Opposition leaders called it unsupported. The claim is checkable only to a point: the Commission’s records can show how many voters were absent, but a nationality finding needs a separate process that the papers we opened do not describe.