Election Commission set to roll out phase III of SIR in 'coming days'; to cover 22 states, UTs

New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) is set to roll out phase three of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters' list in the next "coming days", officials said on Monday, adding that it could cover the remaining 22 states and Union Territories covering nearly 40 crore electors.

The poll authority had held back its rollout due to assembly elections in Kerala, Assam, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal held last month.

The officials said SIR could be rolled out in the "coming days" as the poll process is now complete.

So far, SIR has been carried out in 10 states and three UTs. They are Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Puducherry, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Goa and Bihar.

A 'special revision' of electoral rolls was carried out in Assam.

Sixty crore of the nearly 99 crore voters have been covered in the clean-up exercises of these voters' list.

The remaining nearly 40 crore electors will be covered in the proposed exercise in 17 states and five UTs.

On February 19, the poll authority had asked 22 states and UTs including Delhi to complete preparatory work related to SIR at the earliest as the exercise is "expected to start from April".

Once the exercise is completed, all states and UTs will be covered.

In a letter to the chief electoral officers of 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 Uttakrakhand, the poll authority said pan-India SIR of voters' list was ordered in June last year.

Due to a variety of reasons, SIR has seen frequent tweaking in schedules.

For instance, in Bihar, political parties had approached the Supreme Court challenging SIR in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

Recently, TMC president and then West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee personally pleaded before a bench of the chief justice of India against the poll roll cleanup exercise in her state.

As the EC was preparing for SIR in Bihar, its officials had claimed that several nationals from Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar were found by its grassroots level functionaries.

But eventually, the poll authority did not share any numbers or proof of such people who were not eligible to be on the voters' list.

Opposition parties had dubbed the EC's claims as a ploy to carry out SIR to target electors not aligned to the BJP and its allies.

The combined voters' list of nine states and three UTs has been pruned by 10.2 per cent following the SIR exercise carried out by the Election Commission, with over 60 lakh dead voters removed, data shared by the poll authority and its state officials shows.

When phase II of the SIR of electoral rolls was announced by the EC on October 27, the voter base across the 12 states and UTs stood at more than 50.99 crore.

Post the exercise, the voters' list stands at 45.81 crore -- a decline of over 5.18 crore. In percentage terms, the electoral rolls have been reduced by 10.2 per cent.

As many as 66,88,636 deceased electors have been removed from the rolls, with the maximum of 25.47 lakh from Uttar Pradesh, followed by 24.16 lakh from West Bengal.

Additionally, 63.16 lakh names were deleted following objections and adjudication during the SIR exercise.

The second phase of SIR has now been completed with the final electoral rolls of 10 states and three UTs published on different dates.

While the exercise, which kept the EC in the news, had earlier been completed in Bihar, the second phase with nearly 51 crore electors has now concluded.