EC may launch 1st phase of pan-India SIR next week, covering 10-15 states

Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, and West Bengal will go to polls in 2026 and will be among the first states where the Election Commission begins voter list revision

The Election Commission (EC) is likely to launch the first phase of a pan-India special intensive revision (SIR) of voter lists next week, starting with “10 to 15 states”, news agency PTI reported. This exercise will include states scheduled to go to polls next year.

 

Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, and West Bengal will go to polls next year and will be among the first states where the voter list revision begins. Officials said that the Election Commission is likely to announce the initial phase of SIR in the middle of next week, covering up to 15 states.

 

The poll body will avoid conducting the exercise in states where local body elections are ongoing or imminent, as election machinery will already be busy. SIR in these regions will be carried out in later phases.   

 

Bihar SIR completed, final roll published

 

Bihar has already completed its SIR, with the final voter list containing nearly 74.2 million names, published on September 30. The exercise started in June and involved extensive field surveys.

 

When the SIR began on June 24, Bihar’s electoral rolls had 78.9 million names. After field surveys in July, the draft roll released on August 1 contained 72.4 million entries, removing 6.5 million names found to be “absent”, “shifted”, or “dead".

 

The final roll now adds 2.153 million voters to the draft list and removes 366,000 names, resulting in a net increase of 1.787 million electors. Bihar will vote in two phases, on November 6 and 11, with counting scheduled for November 14.

 

Preparing the ground for SIR across India

 

The EC has held two conferences with state Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) to finalise the SIR rollout plan. Many states have already uploaded the voter lists published after their last SIR on their CEO websites. For example, Delhi’s CEO website still hosts the 2008 voter list from the last intensive revision. Uttarakhand’s last SIR was in 2006, and that year’s electoral roll is available online.

 

The last SIR in each state serves as the cut-off date for current revisions, similar to how Bihar’s 2003 voter list was used previously. Most states conducted their last SIR between 2002 and 2004, and the mapping of current voters against those lists is nearly complete.

 

The main goal of the SIR is to identify and remove foreign illegal migrants by verifying voters’ places of birth. This step has gained importance amid crackdowns on illegal migrants in various states, including those from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

 

(With agency inputs)