Bhubaneswar, July 5 -- Nearly 20 lakh voters have been removed from Odisha's draft electoral rolls published on Sunday following the month-long special intensive revision (SIR) exercise. Biju Janata Dal (BJD) have alleged that the exercise has excluded far more eligible electors than the Election Commission acknowledges.

The draft electoral rolls, published after a door-to-door verification drive across the state, show that Odisha's electorate has declined from 3.33 crore (33.3 million) to 3.13 crore (31.3 million), a reduction of 20.14 lakh (2.014 million) voters.

Chief electoral officer (CEO) of Odisha, R Sant Gopalan said the deletions were largely on account of deaths, migration and duplicate enrolments, while the BJD claimed the ex...