The Election Commission of India (ECI) will begin the enumeration phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in 12 states and union territories on Tuesday (November 4, 2025).
The SIR exercise will cover nearly 51 million voters in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.
Among them, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry will go to polls in 2026.
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The first round of the clean-up exercise took place in Bihar earlier this year, during which more than 68 million names were deleted from the electoral rolls.
The house-to-house counting process will take place from November 4 to December 4. ECI will publish the draft documents on 9 December, after which claims and objections can be submitted from 9 December to 8 January. Notices will be issued and hearings and verifications will be held from December 9 to January 31.
The final electoral lists will be published on February 7.
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In most of these states, the SIR exercise was last conducted between 2002 and 2004 and they have almost completed mapping the current electorate, he said.
ECI introduced certain changes to SIR 2.0 based on the lessons learned from the experience in Bihar. Among the most significant changes is the directive that no documents should be collected from voters during the census. The election body took the decision after finding in Bihar that a significant number of voters could be traced to electoral rolls prepared after the previous SIR.
Second, before the announcement of the SIR, the electoral body began the process of comparing the current electoral rolls with those from 2002 to 2004, during which the last SIR was conducted in these states. This procedure was referred to as premapping. Most states are therefore expected to have lists of people whose names have already appeared on the electoral roll and are therefore not expected to submit any of the 11 guidance documents with their census forms.
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Aadhaar was added as the 12th document as per the Supreme Court guidelines, but only as a proof of identity, not citizenship. The polling authority has also modified the census form to include a column where a parent or relative can provide a signature in the voter’s absence. This signature will be signed by the Cabin Level Officer (BLO).
For voters whose enumeration forms have not been returned, the BLO may determine probable cause, including death or duplication, through inquiries with neighboring voters and document those findings.
As the draft electoral rolls will contain only the names of those who have submitted the census forms, the booth lists of voters whose names were not included in the draft lists will be displayed on the notice board of the concerned Panchayat Bhavan or Urban Local Body Office and in the offices of the Block Development Officers. This will allow the general public to access the said voter lists along with the probable reasons for the omission of their names.
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Voters who could not be linked to the previous SIR will be notified by Electoral Registration Officers to ascertain their eligibility only after the draft rolls are published.
Unlike Bihar, the electoral rolls of all states will also be available for mapping the names of voters and their parents or guardians. This means that voters can check their names on the electoral roll of any state in the country, not just the state where they currently reside.
In another modification to the process, new voter registrations will be conducted simultaneously during the house-to-house census. The BLO will carry at least 30 blank Forms 6 along with blank declaration forms to provide to anyone who wants to register as a new voter.
Published – 03 Nov 2025 21:32 IST
