The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced the launch of the second phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across 12 states and Union Territories, covering roughly half of India’s nearly one billion-strong electorate in an exercise that will become a political flashpoint.
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar said electoral rolls will be frozen in 10 states and two UTs at midnight on Monday: These include four states that go to the polls in 2026, three in 2027, three in 2028, and two in 2029 . The enumeration process will begin on November 4, with draft rolls to be published on December 9, and the final rolls on February 7, 2026.
“SIR will ensure no eligible elector is left out and no ineligible elector is included in poll rolls,” Kumar said at a press conference.”Phase two of SIR will cover 51 crore voters.”
The 12 states and Union Territories covered 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 are due for assembly elections in 2026.
The Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed the announcement but major opposition parties, including the Congress, DMK, TMC, AAP, CPI(M) and Shiv Sena (UBT) criticised the move. “To conduct SIR in a hasty and opaque manner is nothing but a conspiracy by the ECI to rob citizens of their rights and help the BJP,” Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin posted on X.
Among the biggest shifts from the Bihar round of the exercise was the inclusion of Aadhaar as one of the documents that an elector can furnish to bolster her claim for inclusion. But its applicability remained unclear. “Aadhaar card is not proof of citizenship, but it can be furnished as an identity proof in the SIR exercise,” he said. He further clarified that the Aadhaar card cannot serve as proof of date of birth or domicile. In Bihar, ECI had initially made a list of 11 documents and later added Aadhaar after a Supreme Court order.
Kumar said a separate provision of the Citizenship Act was applicable to Assam, which also goes to the polls in 2026.”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,” Kumar said.
{{/usCountry}}Kumar said a separate provision of the Citizenship Act was applicable to Assam, which also goes to the polls in 2026.”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,” Kumar said.
{{/usCountry}}“So there will be separate revision orders issued for Assam, and a separate SIR date will be announced,” he added.
The current SIR marks the ninth such revision of electoral rolls since Independence, with the last conducted between 2002 and 2004. The controversial exercise was conducted in Bihar beginning July 1, which saw roughly 100,000 booth-level officers fan out across 38 districts and distribute partially pre-filled forms to electors. In all, the number of deletions stood at 6.9 million names and the number of additions stood at 2.15 million. The final roll of 74.2 million people, published on September 30, is the basis of the high-stakes assembly elections in Bihar next month.
The deletions in Bihar were among the largest single removal of voters from any state’s electoral rolls in recent memory, a move the poll panel defended as being necessary in the Supreme Court to maintain the sanctity of elections. But the Opposition called SIR an effort to disenfranchise marginalised communities and the exercise is certain to turn into a political flashpoint, especially in West Bengal, where chief minister Mamata Banerjee is staunchly opposed to it.
ECI hailed the SIR in Bihar. “I extend my greetings to the voters of Bihar and bow before the 7.5 crore (75 million) voters who took part in a successful SIR,” Kumar said. “The participation of voters in Bihar has been exemplary and sets a benchmark for other states,” he said.
It also dismissed speculation of problems in Bengal. “There is no hurdle between the Election Commission and the state government. The commission is doing its constitutional duty by carrying out the SIR, and the state government will discharge its constitutional duties,” Kumar said.
The second phase of the SIR is expected to cover 510 million people, who’ll be covered by 533,000 booth level officers. There are several procedural differences between the Bihar SIR and the process across 12 states.
First, during the Bihar SIR, ECI relied only on the state’s previous SIR data from 2003 to cross-verify entries. For the second phase, however, ECI has created an all-India database containing data from previous SIR exercises across all states. This database will enable election officials to check voter records nationally and identify individuals registered in more than one location.
Second, the process of document collection has been modified. In Bihar, documents were initially collected from some electors during the enumeration stage itself – before clarifications from ECI pushed the document collection to the second stage of the exercise. Under the new guidelines, documents will not be sought during enumeration but only at the verification stage. The rationale, according to officials, is that many voters will already qualify based on their names appearing in the 2003 electoral roll or through the inclusion of their parents’ names in that roll. If a person’s name is on 2002-2004 SIR roll, they will not have to give proof as their name will be included in the new roll. Kumar said that once BLOs begin distributing the forms, voters will be able to verify their details against historical voter records. “All those whose names are on the Enumeration Forms can match whether their names were on the 2003 voter list. If their names, or those of their parents, appear in the 2003 rolls, they will not need to submit any additional documents,” Kumar said.
There will be exemptions for relatives of those who figured on the 2002-2004 SIR rolls (previously it was just for their children) and the list of excluded names will be published in all states. Booth level agents will be allowed to submit 50 enumeration forms per day.
A third change concerns Form 6, which is used for the registration of new voters. During the Bihar SIR, this form was distributed separately after the enumeration process. In the second phase, Form 6 will be provided simultaneously with the enumeration forms, allowing eligible individuals to apply for inclusion in the rolls at the same time their household data is being collected.
Kumar said that the problem of electors being registered at multiple places or holding multiple EPIC cards will get resolved as a singular enumeration form will be printed for them and in case they sign two enumeration forms, they will be subjected to criminal proceedings. Kumar further said that no de-duplication will be conducted as SIR does not require the process.
The EC’s de-duplication software identifies potential duplicate voter entries, which are then verified through field visits before any names are deleted. ECI had come under fire for not conducting de-duplication of the electoral roll before the Bihar SIR; the exercise is intended to check if the name of an individual voter figures more than once in the roll and is considered to be a key exercise to maintain purity of the rolls.
About Kerala, where local body elections are expected in the coming months, the CEC said that there was no reason to defer the SIR. “The notification of the local bodies elections was yet to be issued,” he stated. Hence, the SIR exercise would proceed as scheduled. The Kerala CEO had requested the commission to postpone the SIR exercise in the state due to local elections.
The SIR aims to clean electoral rolls through field verification, door-to-door enumeration, and public display of draft rolls to invite claims and objections. The CEC said the purpose of the SIR is twofold — to ensure that no eligible voter is left out and to remove ineligible names, including those of deceased persons, shifted voters, or duplicates.
The commission reiterated that the SIR is not intended to target or exclude any specific groups of voters but is a standard revision mechanism to ensure the integrity of electoral rolls.
Kumar also referred to the constitutional and legal obligations guiding the process. “The Constitution and the Representation of the People Act place the responsibility for preparing accurate electoral rolls on the Election Commission. The cooperation of state governments is essential and mandatory for this process,” he said.
The CEC underlined that the SIR will be implemented in a transparent and verifiable manner, with public participation encouraged at all stages. Citizens will be able to check their names, file claims or objections, and verify the accuracy of entries once the draft rolls are published on December 9.