EC’s BIG announcement on special intensive revision; phase-wise SIR across India to begin in…

Special Intensive Revision: The pan-India special intensive revision of voters’ list will be rolled out in a phased manner, started with a group of states, including those where assembly polls are due next year, the Election Commission has said.

Where will SIR be conducted in phase 1?

As per officials, in the first phase, SIR exercise will be launched in states which are bound for assembly polls in 2026, which essentially means that Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will be among the first where the exercise will be conducted first, along with a few other states.

Addressing a presser on Monday to announce the Bihar assembly polls, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar said work is in progress to launch SIR of electoral rolls in all states and a final decision on its rollout will be taken by the Election Commission, adding that the poll authority had previously announced its plan for a pan-India SIR while rolling out Bihar SIR on June 24.

“The work is on and the three commissioners will meet to decide on dates for various states to launch their respective SIRs,” said CEC Kumar.

Officials said the Commission will not hold any electoral roll cleanup exercise in states where local body elections are taking place or are due, as the grass roots poll machinery is busy with it and may not be able to focus on SIR.

EC directs CEOs to gear up for pan-India SIR

Earlier, at a conference held in national capital New Delhi, the top EC officials had directed state chief electoral officers (CEOs) to gear up for a pan-India SIR roll out in the next 10 to 15 days, setting a September 30 deadline for the CEOs to prepare for the voter roll cleanup exercise, according to news agency PTI.

As per the report, the EC has directed the CEOs to keep ready the electoral rolls of their states published after the last SIR, and several CEOs have already put the voter list published after their last SIR on their respective state websites.

The website of the Delhi CEO has the 2008 voter list when the last intensive revision took place in the national capital, while Uttarakhand has published the 2006 electoral roll details, when the last SIR was conducted in that state.

The last SIR in states will serve as the cut-off date, just as the 2003 voter list of Bihar was used by the EC for intensive revision, officials said.

Why EC conducted Bihar SIR?

Notably, the previous SIR in most states was conducted between 2002 and 2004, and majority of states and Union Territories have nearly completed mapping of current electors with the voters according to the last SIR, PTI reported.

The Election Commission recently published the final voter list of nearly 7.42 crore electors in Bihar after conducting a monthly-long SIR exercise in the poll-bound state. The poll panel has asserted that weeding out illegal migrants from the voter list was the primary goal of the Bihar SIR exercise.

(With PTI inputs)

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