Chief electoral officer R Santhana Gopalan, who oversaw the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in Odisha amid Opposition protests over voter deletions, has applied for voluntary retirement, citing personal and health reasons unrelated to the exercise, people aware of the matter said on Thursday.
He delayed the decision until the SIR process was completed and the revised electoral roll was published, they added. The people cited above said Gopalan, who is from Tamil Nadu and has around 18 months of service left, had been considering quitting for months.
In the last three years, four IAS and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers from the Odisha cadre have resigned. IAS officer VK Pandian, who was considered the successor to former chief minister Naveen Patnaik, opted for voluntary retirement in October 2023 before joining the BJD ahead of the 2024 assembly and Lok Sabha polls in the state. His wife, Sujata Karthikeyan, an Odisha cadre IAS officer, resigned in March 2025 before joining BJD in June this year.
The Odisha electoral roll, with 31.6 million voters, was published on September 21 after SIR. The opposition Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Congress questioned the deletion of around 1.7 million names from the roll.
