New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday (May 14) directed the third stage of its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, spanning 16 states and three Union Territories – an operation in which 3.94 lakh field-level officials will examine 367.3 million voters.
The revision, scheduled to proceed alongside the ongoing Census house-listing operation, will assign Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for door-to-door inspections across these states and Union Territories: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, NCT of Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, Uttarakhand.
Three regions have been excluded for the moment – Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh. The commission stated their timetable would be revealed later, after considering the completion of Census Phase II in those areas and “weather in the upper reaches/snow bound areas.”
“I urge all electors to actively participate in the third stage of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and complete their enumeration forms. SIR is being conducted with the aim to ensure that only qualified voters are included in the electoral roll and no ineligible names are added,” said CEC Gyanesh Kumar on the commencement of the third stage of SIR.
The operation will be phased across multiple timelines. Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim and Manipur are among the first to commence, with house-to-house inspections beginning May 30 and final electoral rolls anticipated by September 6.
States such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi and Jharkhand will adopt a later timeline, with final rolls expected by October 7. In Tripura the exercise will conclude by December 23, which is latest among all the states.
Political parties have been instructed to appoint Booth Level Agents for every polling booth to maintain transparency in the process. Around 3.42 lakh such agents have already been positioned. The commission stated the revision is “a participative exercise involving all stakeholders including electors, political parties and election officials.”
In the initial two stages, spanning 13 states and Union Territories with nearly 590 million voters, more than 6.3 lakh BLOs and 9.2 lakh party-appointed agents participated in the process.
Maharashtra has the largest voter population among the states included in this stage, with over 98.6 million electors, followed by Karnataka at 55.5 million and Andhra Pradesh at 41.6 million.
The SIR exercise was surrounded by controversies in West Bengal as 2.7 million voters were left awaiting their fate to be determined by 19 judicial tribunals less than two weeks before polls, with even the Supreme Court declining to provide interim relief. The tribunals eventually resolved only a tiny number of cases before polling day.
As reported by The Wire, in 150 seats, more than half of West Bengal’s 294, total deletions exceeded victory margins, and out of these the BJP secured 99. In 2021, it had secured only 19 of these.
Commenting on the SIR exercise, psephologist Yogendra Yadav told The Wire on May 4, “SIR has introduced a framework of curation of voter lists. In this country we understood that voters elected the government. SIR has inverted the process. Now the government can determine who the voters will be. Once that is accepted it completely overturns the foundation of democracy.”
