Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 26: India seems all set to phase-wise go for “Special Intensive Revision” (SIR) of the electoral rolls after the system was set rolling in poll-bound Bihar to weed out alleged bogus voters from the voter lists.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) is expected to announce on Monday the dates for rolling out nation-wide “SIR” on Monday. According to the ECI sources, at least 10 states including those where the Assembly elections are due in the next year will be covered in the first phase of SIR.
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and the union territory of Puducherry are due to go to the polls in 2026. Three days ago, the Election Commission had held a meeting with Chief Electoral Officers from all states and Union Territories in Delhi. They had discussed the experience in Bihar and decided to streamline the process.
The ECI took stock of the preparedness of all States and Union Territories for the pan-India SIR, at the two-day conference of Chief Electoral Officers (CEO) that concluded in New Delhi on Thursday. The two-day conference was presided over by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, along with Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
The commission assessed the progress made on the directions previously issued to the CEOs to map the current electors with the electors as per the last SIR in the States and Union Territories, according to an official statement by the poll body. The statement said the commission also interacted one-to-one with the CEOs of poll-bound States/Union Territory of Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, and West Bengal.
The conference was held as a follow-up to the SIR preparedness conference held on September 10, during which all the States/UTs gave detailed presentations on the number of electors, qualifying date of last SIR, and the electoral rolls in their respective States/UTs as per the last completed SIR.
The commission assessed the progress made on the directions previously issued to the CEOs to map the current electors with the electors as per the last SIR in the States and Union Territories, according to an official statement by the poll body.
“In Bihar, the SIR process took nearly four months from June 24 to September 30. However, the Commission is now planning to shorten this time frame,” the ECI sources said. The Commission had instructed all states and Union Territories to start pre-matching previous and current electoral rolls, so the voter verification process will not take more time.
The process is expected to be rolled out in two phases, beginning with Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, and West Bengal, where Assembly elections are due in 2026. Those States where local body polls are scheduled to be held and are likely to experience harsh weather conditions during winters will be tackled in later phases.
The sources said the commission heard the points raised by the CEOs of all States at the conference and while it responded to general queries and held a presentation on the SIR, no concrete decisions were announced at the meeting. It was stated that a decision would be communicated to all CEOs after the meeting of the Election Commission members.
The decision on SIR comes on the heels of an avalanche of criticism from the Opposition over the way the process was conducted in Bihar. The matter went to the Supreme Court also, which ordered the inclusion of Aadhaar as one of the acceptable identity documents. The judges had over-ruled the poll body’s reservations about forgery, and said instead of “en masse exclusion,” there should be “en masse inclusion.”
The SIR was conducted in Bihar amid intense scrutiny and repeated requests to shut it down. Around 66,000 names were dropped from the voter list, which, the poll body alleged, reflected deaths, duplication and migration. The Opposition had alleged that it was aimed at mass disenfranchisement, particularly of likely anti-BJP votes. Producing data from several areas, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi had alleged a collusion between the Commission and the BJP to deliver a massive mandate to the ruling party and SIR was alleged to be the medium to remove the class of voters usually supporting the opposition.
The ECI had informed the Madras High Court on Friday that it would commence “in a week or so” a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu set to witness Assembly elections in 2026. It had also assured the court that the commission would follow all the directions issued by the Supreme Court, in a case related to the SIR conducted in Bihar, while carrying out the exercise in Tamil Nadu. Its counsel told the court that the commission has already held consultations with the Chief Electoral Officers.
The submissions were made during the hearing of a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (AIADMK) former Member of the Legislative Assembly B. Sathyanarayanan, who represented the T. Nagar constituency in Chennai between 2016 and 2021. The petitioner had sought a direction to the ECI to conduct a complete and transparent re-verification of the electoral rolls related to all 229 parts of the T. Nagar constituency, through booth-level officers, and rectify wrongful deletions as well as the erroneous inclusion of the voters in the rolls.
