SIR in remaining states and Union Territories expected to start from April, EC asks poll officers to prepare

New Delhi: The contentious Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in remaining 22 states and union territories, including Karnataka,  is expected to start from April, the Election Commission told Chief Electoral Officers on Thursday.

The CEOs have been asked to “complete preparatory work” related to SIR “at the earliest”, EC Secretary Pawan Diwan said in his letter.

The letter recalled that the EC had on June 24 last year ordered that SIR will be undertaken across the country and directed all CEOs, except Bihar where the exercise started in June 2025 itself, to initiate pre-revision activities for the exercise.

The exercise in these states will coincide with the first phase of Census 2027, which is the Houselisting and Housing Census that will be undertaken between April and September. EC officials said they were confident that both exercises will not clash

After the Bihar exercise concluded, the EC announced SIR in 12 states and union territories – Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Puducherry , Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

A Special Revision instead of SIR was conducted in Assam, owing to legal hurdles posed by an incomplete National Register of Citizens (NRC) process.

While Gujarat, Puducherry and Lakshadweep where SIR has concluded and Assam have published the final voter list, the exercise in other states are in various stages of completion.

The EC is now taking up the exercise in remaining states – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Ladakh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana and Uttarakhand.

Officials said the preparatory works include mapping the existing voters with the electoral roll of 2002-2004, when the last SIR was held. The EC officials expect that a large proportion of voters in the present list could be linked to the previous SIR rolls. Extensive training will be given to Booth Level Officers to carry out the exercise.

The SIR had faced criticism from some sections, including the Opposition that accused the EC of making it an exercise aimed at deletion and exclusion of voters instead of inclusion.

After the Bihar SIR, the EC tweaked the exercise but it too ran into trouble after voters faced the prospects of being deleted from the rolls due to “logical discrepancies”. The second phase of SIR saw 6.56 crore of 50.96 crore names getting deleted in the draft list.