NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced that it would conduct phase two of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in nine States and three Union Territories.
Distribution and collection of door-to-door enumeration forms will be done between November 4 and December 4, and the final voters’ list will be published on February 7, 2026.
Announcing it at a press conference here, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said that the draft electoral rolls would be published on December 9, with the claims and objections period to span from December 9, 2025, to January 8, 2026 and hearing and verifications to be done between December 9, 2025 and January 31, 2026.
The nine states where the SIR exercise will be undertaken include Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal and among the UTs are Andaman & Nicobar, Lakshadweep and Puducherry.
Notably, among the states and the UTs, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal will go to the polls in 2026.
CEC Kumar, however, clarified that in Assam, where polls are also due in 2026, the revision of electoral rolls will be announced separately, as a separate provision of the Citizenship Act applied to the State.
“Under the Citizenship Act, there are separate provisions for citizenship in Assam. Under the supervision of the Supreme Court, the exercise of checking for citizenship is about to be completed. The June 24 SIR order was for the entire country. Under such circumstances, this would not have applied to Assam,” Kumar said.
He said that the ongoing SIR is the ninth such exercise since Independence, with the last one happening in 2002-04.
Ruling out any confrontation with the West Bengal government, where the ruling TMC has expressed reservations about the SIR exercise in the State, Kumar said, “There is no hurdle between the Election Commission and the State government. The Commission is doing its constitutional duty by carrying out the SIR enshrined in Article 326 of the Constitution and the State government will discharge its constitutional duties.”
When asked about Kerala’s local bodies elections, which is due sometime in November-December this year, and questioned if the ECI will get adequate staff to conduct the SIR in the State, Kumar said, “The notification for the same was yet to be issued and the state governments are bound by Constitution to provide the necessary personnel to the Election Commission of India for the preparation of electoral rolls and conduct of polls.”
Meanwhile, taking lessons from its Bihar experience, where the final list with nearly 7.42 crore electors was published on September 30, the ECI has issued a fresh instructions to the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of the concerned States and the UTs stating that, “no document is to be collected from electors during the Enumeration Phase and for electors whose Enumeration Forms have not returned, BLOs may identify a probable cause, such as Absent/Shifted/Death/Duplicate, based on an inquiry from the nearby electors and note the same”.
As per the fresh instructions, EROs will issue notice, only after publication of draft Electoral Rolls, to those electors who could not be linked with previous SIR Electoral Rolls, to ascertain their eligibility.
“During door-to-door house enumeration, BLOs will carry at least 30 blank Form 6 along with blank Declaration Forms (Annexure IV), to supply to anyone who seeks to enrol as a new elector,” the ECI said.
The ECI has already held two conferences with state chief electoral officers (CEOs) to firm up the SIR rollout roadmap. Several CEOs have already put the voter lists after their last SIR on their websites.
