EC may conduct nationwide SIR of electoral rolls by 2025 end

New Delhi: The Election Commission is heading to conduct a nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls by the year-end and is expected to announce the schedule soon, officials said on Wednesday after a day-long meeting of state Chief Electoral Officers.

The review meeting, which was inaugurated by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in the presence of Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, saw Bihar Chief Electoral Officer Vinod Singh Gunjiyal making a presentation on the "strategies, constraints and best practices" adopted in Bihar during the ongoing controversial exercise.

Sources indicated that the EC is likely to conduct the exercise this year itself as four states and a union territory -- Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal -- will witness Assembly elections in April-May next year.

At the meeting, an official statement said, CEOs gave detailed presentations on the number of voters, qualifying date of last SIR and electoral roll in their respective states and union territories as per the last completed SIR.

The CEOs also presented the status of digitisation and uploading of the electoral roll after the previous SIR on the state/UT CEO website as well as the status of mapping of current electors with the electors as per the last SIR in the State/UT.

Amid the EC facing criticism over the documents prescribed for the Bihar SIR, the statement said that the CEOs also provided "suggested documents" for the purpose of ensuring that no eligible citizen is left out of the electoral roll and no ineligible person is included in it. "It was reiterated that these documents should promote ease of submission for the eligible citizens," it said.

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the EC to include Aadhaar as the 12th document in the exercise, though it cannot be used as a document to prove citizenship.

The meeting also reviewed the status of rationalisation of polling stations to ensure that such facilities do not have more than 1,200 voters.

The EC had on June 24 said that it has decided to begin SIR in the entire country and would be starting it with Bihar, as the state is going to polls in October-November. It had then said that the schedule for the rest of the country would be announced later.

It had reasoned that the SIR was necessary because the exercise was last held in 2003 and due to rapid urbanisation and frequent migration, there could be instances of repeated entry in electoral rolls.