Yogi Adityanath's claim that 1.27 crore Hindus are missing from UP's voter lists is misleading

What we found

The claim is misleading. Uttar Pradesh’s voter roll did shrink sharply in the Special Intensive Revision, so Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is right that many voters are not on it. But the 1.27 crore Hindus figure has no published source. The Election Commission does not release the roll by religion, and the three gaps he listed are not described as Hindu voters.

Adityanath spoke at the BJP’s state executive committee meeting on Friday, October 30, according to reports of the speech. He urged workers to coordinate with booth level officers and said the names of 1.27 crore Hindus were missing, and that Uttar Pradesh should have more than 16 crore voters against about 13 crore.

The evidence

1

The roll did lose names

The roll frozen on October 27, 2025, had about 15.44 crore electors. The draft published on January 6, 2026, had 12,55,56,025, and the final roll of April 10 has 13,39,84,792, which is 2.04 crore fewer than the frozen roll. Between the draft and the final roll, 84,28,767 names were added. The Chief Electoral Officer, Navdeep Rinwa, gave the final figures at a press conference in Lucknow.

2

There is no count by religion

None of the published roll figures is split by religion: neither the draft nor the final roll. The only breakdowns seen are by gender (834 women per 1,000 men in the final roll), by age and by district. The draft stage did give reasons for the 2.89 crore names proposed for deletion against the pre-revision list: absent, shifted or missing 2.17 crore, dead 46.23 lakh and duplicate 25.46 lakh. None of these is a religious category, and none supports a figure of 1.27 crore Hindus.

3

The three gaps do not make a Hindu total

Adityanath reportedly named 66 lakh people on panchayat rolls but not on assembly rolls, 55 lakh welfare beneficiaries not on the rolls and about 4.5 lakh young people aged 18 and 19. These add up to about 1.26 crore, not 1.27 crore, and the reports do not say they were added together. They are lists of different kinds, which may overlap, and nothing in them identifies a voter’s religion.

4

The “four lakh added” remark does not match the record

He also said only four lakh voters were added in the previous revision. The Commission’s figure for this one is 84.29 lakh added between draft and final, with 86.69 lakh Form 6 applications for inclusion. The reports do not say which exercise he meant.

From the frozen roll to the claim

1. Oct 27, 2025Roll frozen at about 15.44 crore electors; revision begins
2. Jan 6, 2026Draft roll: 12.56 crore, with 2.89 crore names proposed for deletion
3. Apr 10, 2026Final roll: 13.40 crore, 84.29 lakh names added since the draft
4. Oct 30, 2026Adityanath tells BJP workers 1.27 crore Hindus are missing
5. Nov 6, 2026Akhilesh Yadav asks how the Chief Minister knows they are Hindus

Why this claim spread

The roll fell by crores with the 2027 assembly election due next year, and both sides read the numbers politically. The BJP is using the gap to push workers to enrol eligible voters, with a new revision of the state’s rolls due to begin on November 12. The Samajwadi Party has called the Hindu framing a way to justify the revision and has alleged misuse of Form 7 deletion applications, which the available reports do not confirm.

The fair reading is narrow. Some eligible voters may well be missing, and the Commission accepts claims and objections after the final roll. What the record does not show is a figure of 1.27 crore, or that the missing are Hindus. If the Chief Minister’s office publishes the data behind it, this rating will be revisited.