SIR exercise to begin in 12 states, Union territories from Tuesday

Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Election Commission's voters' list cleanup exercise, will commence in nine states and three Union territories from Tuesday.

SIR in these states and Union territories with 51 crore voters will conclude on February 7, 2026, with the publication of the final electoral roll.

After Bihar, this is the second round of SIR. The state's final voter list with nearly 7.42 crore names was published on September 30.

The 12 states and Union territories where the second round of SIR will be conducted are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Among these, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal will go to polls in 2026. In Assam, another state where polls are due in 2026, the revision of electoral rolls will be announced separately as a Supreme Court-supervised exercise to verify citizenship is underway in the state.

Also, a separate provision of the Citizenship Act was applicable to Assam.

"Under the Citizenship Act, there are separate provisions for citizenship in Assam. Under the supervision of the Supreme Court, the exercise of checking 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," Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said on October 27 while announcing the latest phase of SIR.

"So there will be separate revision orders issued for Assam, and a separate SIR date will be announced," he said.

SIR will begin on November 4 with the enumeration stage and continue till December 4.

The EC will release the draft electoral rolls on December 9, and the final electoral rolls will be published on February 7.

The ongoing SIR is the ninth such exercise since independence, with the last one conducted in 2002-04.

The EC is of the view that SIR will ensure that no eligible elector is left out and no ineligible elector is included in the electoral rolls.

The last SIR in states will serve as the cut-off date, just as the 2003 voter list of Bihar was used by the EC for intensive revision.

Most states had the last SIR between 2002 and 2004, and they have nearly completed the mapping of current electors according to it.

The primary aim of SIR is to weed out illegal foreign migrants by checking their place of birth. The move assumes significance in the wake of a crackdown in various states on illegal migrants, including those from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

When SIR was launched in Bihar in June, several political parties claimed that it would disenfranchise crores of eligible citizens for want of documents.

When the matter reached the Supreme Court, the EC defended its decision to clean up the voters' list and assured that no eligible citizen of India would be left out.

After the final voters' list was published, the opposition's attack on SIR and the EC has been muted.

Ahead of SIR in 12 states and Union territories, several political parties in Tamil Nadu on Sunday resolved to approach the Supreme Court against the exercise in the state.

This time, the EC has included the voters' list of Bihar published after SIR and Aadhaar card in the list of indicative documents people will have to submit in the 12 states and Union territories.

Tweaking the rules followed during Bihar SIR, the EC has now instructed its field machinery that electors do not have to submit documents at the enumeration stage itself.

People who cannot be linked with the previous SIR of their respective state will have to provide documents once they are served notice by the electoral registration officer.