The Election Commission of India announced at a press conference on Monday that after Bihar, special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls will now be conducted in 12 more states and union territories (UTs).
Here are the 12 states/UTs where SIR will be conducted from tomorrow:
Andaman & Nicobar; Chhattisgarh; Gujarat; Kerala; Lakshwadweep; Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
Among the 12 states and UTs mentioned by the EC, parliamentary elections will be held in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in 2026.
Assam, which will also go to polls next year, was surprisingly left out of the list.
While the EC defended the need for SIR, it said that electoral rolls must be revised before every election or as required.
It stated that the SIR “has already been conducted 8 times from 1951 to 2004” and that the last SIR was conducted more than 21 years ago, in 2002-2004.
According to the EC, there have been changes in voter lists due to frequent migration, which results in voters being registered in more than one place; failure to remove dead voters from voter lists and due to the unauthorized inclusion of any alien.
EC on Aadhaar Card
Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar reiterated during the press conference that Aadhaar card is not a proof of citizenship but can be provided as proof of identity during the SIR exercise.
When asked about West Bengal, where the leader reportedly said there would be bloodbath on the streets if the name of a single voter was deleted from the electoral roll, Kumar said he was confident that all state governments would fulfill their constitutional obligations.
In Bihar, the cleansing of the electoral roll was completed, with the final list of nearly 7.42 million voters released on 30 September. Elections in the state will be held in two phases — November 6 and November 11 — and counting will take place on November 14.
The Election Commission has already held two conferences with Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) to confirm the plan to roll out SIR. Several CEOs have already put the voter lists after their last SIR on their websites.
