The Election Commission on Tuesday (November 4, 2025) launched the second phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in nine states and three union territories covering around 51 million voters, with booth-level officials distributing enumeration forms to voters.
However, the exercise drew sharp opposition from several quarters. West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee led a rally in Kolkata that it claimed was a “silent, invisible machination”, while the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu challenged the exercise in the Supreme Court, calling it “arbitrary, disproportionate and prone to voter disenfranchisement”.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has welcomed the clean-up exercise as a step to ensure greater transparency in electoral rolls.
The poll body said booth level officers (BLOs) have started going door to door to distribute partially filled forms. Each voter will be given a unique form, it said.
During the enumeration phase, which will continue till December 4, more than 5.3 million BLOs will visit homes at least three times for distribution and collection of forms.
Apart from BLOs, there were 7.64 lakh Booth Level Agents (BLAs) appointed by political parties, 10,448 Electoral Registration Officers and ERO Assistants and 321 DEOs who were pressed to conduct the SIR exercise in a smooth, orderly and voter-friendly manner, a senior official said.
The 12 States and Union Territories where SIR is conducted are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Among them, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry will go to polls in 2026.
The first phase of the SIR exercise took place in Bihar earlier this year, after which more than 68 million names were deleted from the electoral rolls.
Addressing an anti-SIR rally in Kolkata, Ms. Banerjee said she would ensure the fall of the BJP-led government at the Center if a single eligible voter was omitted from the electoral roll.
She accused the BJP and the Election Commission of using the SIR as a political tool to intimidate voters, adding that the BJP wanted to come to power by removing legitimate voters from the list. “These people think they’re going to remove two million names and deport people to Bangladesh or move them to detention camps and throw them out of the country to get power,” she said.
The chief minister’s march came on a day when election officials said 16,000 census forms had been distributed in the state.
The Trinamool Congress chief raised questions about the need for a hastily drawn SIR and asked, “Today, after all these years of independence, do we still have to prove that we are Indians?
Ms. Banerjee said the BJP government was elected in 2024 on the same voter list, which the BJP claimed was full of illegal voters. “How did you win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections? What voter list did you follow? If the list is wrong, your government is wrong,” she added.
The Chief Minister targeted Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and asked. “In 2002, the last Bengal SIR took two years to complete. Why the rush to complete it in a month? Just to keep Modi babu and Amit Shah happy?”
Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari led a BJP rally in the suburbs of Kolkata and demanded that every Bangladeshi infiltrator be deported from the country and that the SIR exercise be fully implemented.
In Uttar Pradesh, the exercise was launched on the theme “Shuddh Nirvachak Namavali – Majboot Loktantra” (Clean Electoral Roll – Strong Democracy).
In Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan called for an online meeting of all parties on Wednesday to reach a consensus on the implementation of SIR. Most political parties in the state – barring the BJP – have expressed concern over its timing.
In a statement, the commission said voters can check their names and the names of their relatives in the previous SIR voter lists at to provide details in the census forms. For assistance, voters can also connect with their BLOs using the ‘Book-a-call with BLO’ feature in the ECINet app or dial the toll-free helpline 1950 along with their STD code.
Draft documents will be published on December 9, after which claims and objections can be submitted from December 9 to January 8. Notices will be issued and hearings and verifications will take place from December 9th to January 31st.
The final electoral lists will be published on February 7.
Published – November 4, 2025 10:04 PM IST
