The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced the launch of the second phase of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in 12 states and union territories, covering almost half of India’s nearly one billion voters, in what will become a political hotspot.
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar said electoral rolls will be frozen in 10 states and two union territories at midnight on Monday: these include four states that will go to the polls in 2026, three in 2027, three in 2028 and two in 2029. The counting process will begin on November 4, the draft rolls will be published on December 9 and the final rolls will be published on February 7, 2026.
“The SIR will ensure that no eligible voter is left out and no ineligible voter is included in the voting list,” Kumar said at a press conference. The second phase of SIR will cover 51 crore voters.
The 12 states and union territories covered are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Of these, assembly elections are to be held in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal in 2026.
Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed the announcement but major opposition parties including Congress, DMK, TMC, AAP, CPI(M) and Shiv Sena (UBT) criticized the move. “Conducting the SIR in a hasty and opaque manner is nothing but a conspiracy by the ECI to rob citizens of their rights and help the BJP,” Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin posted on Twitter.
One of the biggest changes in the Bihar round of exercise was the inclusion of Aadhaar as one of the documents a voter can produce to strengthen his claim to be included. But its applicability remained unclear. “Aadhaar card is not proof of citizenship, but it can be presented as identity proof in the SIR exercise,” he said. He further clarified that Aadhaar card cannot serve as proof of date of birth or place of residence. In Bihar, the ECI had initially made a list of 11 documents and Aadhaar was later added after the Supreme Court order.
Kumar said a separate provision of the Citizenship Act applies to Assam, where elections are also scheduled in 2026. “Under the Citizenship Act, there are separate provisions for citizenship in Assam. The process of verifying citizenship is about to be completed under the supervision of the Supreme Court. The June 24 SIR order was for the entire country. Under such circumstances, it does not apply to Assam,” Kumar said.
“Therefore, separate amendment orders will be issued for Assam and a separate SIR date will be announced,” he said.
The current SIR is the ninth such revision of the electoral roll since independence, which was last conducted between 2002 and 2004. The controversial exercise was conducted in Bihar from July 1, in which around 100,000 booth level officials across 38 districts participated and distributed partially pre-filled forms to voters. Overall, the number of deletions was 6.9 million and the number of additions was 2.15 million. The final list of 74.2 million people, published on September 30, is the basis for high-stakes assembly elections in Bihar next month.
The deletion of voters’ names in Bihar was one of the largest removals of voters from the electoral rolls of any state in recent memory, with the election panel defending the move in the Supreme Court as necessary to maintain the sanctity of the election. But the opposition described SIR as an attempt to disenfranchise marginalized communities and it is certain that the exercise will become a political flashpoint, especially in West Bengal, where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a staunch opponent of it.
ECI appreciated SIR in Bihar. “I wish the voters of Bihar all the best and salute the 7.5 crore (75 million) voters who participated in the successful SIR,” Kumar said. “Voter participation in Bihar has been exemplary and sets a benchmark for other states,” he said.
It also dismissed speculations of problems in Bengal. Kumar said, “There is no obstruction between the Election Commission and the state government. The Commission is performing its constitutional duty by carrying out the SIR and the state government will perform its constitutional duties.”
The second phase of SIR is expected to cover 510 million people, who will be covered by 533,000 booth level officials. There are several procedural differences between the Bihar SIR and the process of the 12 states.
First, during the Bihar SIR, the ECI relied only on the state’s previous SIR data from 2003 to cross-verify the entries. However, for the second phase, ECI has created a pan-India database containing data from previous SIR exercises in all states. This database will enable election officials to check voter records at the national level and identify individuals registered at more than one location.
Second, the process of document collection has been revised. In Bihar, documents were initially collected from some voters during the counting phase itself – before the ECI’s clarification pushed the document collection to the second phase of the exercise. Under the new guidelines, the documents will not be asked during the calculation but at the verification stage itself. According to officials, the logic is that many voters would already qualify on the basis of their names in the 2003 voter list or their parents’ names being included in that list. If a person’s name is on the 2002-2004 SIR roll, they will not have to provide proof as their name will be included in the new roll. Kumar said that once the BLOs start distributing the forms, voters will be able to verify their details against the historical voter records. “Those whose names are in the enumeration form can match whether their names were in the 2003 voter list or not. If their or their parents’ names are in the 2003 voter list, they will not be required to submit any additional documents,” Kumar said.
There will be an exemption for relatives of people included in the 2002-2004 SIR rolls (earlier it was only for their children) and the list of excluded names will be published in all states. Booth level agents will be allowed to submit 50 enumeration forms per day.
The third change relates to Form 6, which is used for registration of new voters. During Bihar SIR, this form was distributed separately after the calculation process. In the second phase, Form 6 will also be provided along with the enumeration form, allowing eligible persons to apply for inclusion in the list at the same time as their household data is being collected.
Kumar said the problem of voters being registered at multiple places or having multiple EPIC cards will be solved as a single enumeration form will be printed for them and if they sign two enumeration forms, they will be subject to criminal proceedings. Kumar further said that no de-duplication will be done as the SIR does not require the process.
The Election Commission’s de-duplication software identifies potential duplicate voter entries, which are verified through field visits before removing any names. The ECI had faced criticism for not de-duplicating the voter list before the Bihar SIR; The purpose of this exercise is to check whether the name of an individual voter is included in the list more than once and is considered an important exercise to maintain the accuracy of the roll.
Regarding Kerala, where local body elections are expected to be held in the coming months, the CEC said there is no reason to postpone the SIR. “The notification for local body elections has not been issued yet,” he said. Therefore, the SIR exercise will proceed as per schedule. The Kerala CEO had requested the Commission to postpone the SIR exercise in the state due to local elections.
SIR aims to clean up the voter lists through field verification, door-to-door counting and public display of draft rolls to invite claims and objections. The CEC said the objective of the SIR is twofold – to ensure that no eligible voter is left out and to remove ineligible names including dead persons, transferred voters or duplicates.
The Commission reiterated that the purpose of SIR is not to target or exclude any specific group of voters but is a standard revision mechanism to ensure the integrity of the electoral roll.
Kumar also mentioned the constitutional and legal obligations guiding the process. He said, “The Constitution and the Representation of the People Act puts the responsibility of preparing an accurate voter list on the Election Commission. The cooperation of the state governments is necessary and essential for this process.”
The CEC underlined that the SIR will be implemented in a transparent and verifiable manner, with public participation encouraged at all stages. After the draft roll is published on December 9, citizens will be able to check their names, lodge claims or objections and verify the accuracy of the entries.
