Special Intensive Revision (SIR): How India's Electoral Rolls Are Being Rewritten

The Election Commission of India is in the final stretch of its most extensive voter-roll exercise: the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Ordered in phases (Bihar first, under the ECI order of 24 June 2025; twelve States/UTs from the order of 27 October 2025; and nineteen more announced on 14 May 2026), the SIR is complete in 20 States and Union Territories so far.[4][5][7]

The Commission's press note of 26 September 2026 recorded both the scorecard and the caveat. "SIR has already been completed in 20 States/UTs including Bihar and West Bengal," it said, while making clear that "the final figure of number of electors will be known only after final publication in the remaining 12 states of Phase-III."[7]

The exercise has also cleared its constitutional test. On 27 May 2026, the Supreme Court, in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India (2026 INSC 564), dismissed the petitions against the Bihar SIR and upheld the Commission's power to conduct it, while ruling that the Commission cannot have the last word on citizenship.[6] Here is how an SIR works, what it changed in Bihar, what the Court decided, and where things stand.

The SIR at a glance

• What it is. A Special Intensive Revision: the deepest form of revision of the electoral roll, in which every elector is re-verified through house-to-house enumeration. It differs from the annual summary revision, which updates the roll only at the margins.[4][6]
• Legal basis. Article 324 of the Constitution, Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (Section 21(3) allows a special revision "at any time") and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.[4][6]
• Phases. Bihar (order of 24 June 2025); Phase-II in 12 States/UTs (order of 27 October 2025); Phase-III in 19 States/UTs (announced 14 May 2026). Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh are yet to be scheduled.[4][5][7]
• Scale. Nearly 51 crore electors in Phase-II; 36.73 crore in Phase-III, with 3.94 lakh Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and 3.42 lakh party-appointed Booth Level Agents (BLAs) in the field.[4][5]
• The core safeguard. No deletion from the draft roll without a hearing and a written order; appeals lie to the District Magistrate and the Chief Electoral Officer under Section 24 of the 1950 Act.[1][3]
• Court verdict. Upheld on 27 May 2026; citizenship-related deletions must be adjudicated by the Competent Authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, not finalised by the Commission.[6]
• Status. Complete in 20 States/UTs; final rolls awaited in the remaining 12 Phase-III States/UTs, including Delhi and Maharashtra, whose timelines were extended on 26 September 2026.[7]

What a Special Intensive Revision is, and how it differs from an ordinary revision

Electoral rolls are revised on an annual cycle. In a summary revision, the machinery works at the margins: new voters are added on Form 6, objections and deletions are processed on Form 7, corrections on Form 8, and "continuous updation" keeps the roll moving through the year.[4][6] An intensive revision is different in kind. The roll is re-anchored from the ground up: Booth Level Officers visit every household, every existing entry is enumerated afresh, and the entire roll is republished as a draft for a fresh round of claims and objections before the final roll is issued.[4][6]

Put concretely: in the ordinary course, a deceased voter stays on the roll unless someone files a Form 7 reporting the death, and a migrant can hold on to an old entry while getting enrolled at a new address. Under an SIR, the same household is visited, enumerated and cross-checked, which is why the exercise is able to surface, in one sweep, what summary revisions had allowed to accumulate over years.[6]

The design baseline mattered. In Bihar, the last intensive revision had been conducted in 2003, and it was that 2003 roll that the SIR used as its reference: electors appearing on it were treated as presumptively eligible and did not need to furnish fresh documents, while anyone not on it had to submit an Enumeration Form along with supporting documents.[6]

Why the Commission ordered a full re-verification

The Commission's recorded reasons, preserved in the Supreme Court's judgment, are that over the two decades after 2003 the rolls were updated only through summary revisions, while rapid urbanisation, large-scale migration, non-reporting of deaths and duplication of entries steadily eroded their accuracy.[6]

In plain terms, each of those forces defeats incremental revision:

• Deaths go unreported. Deletion is not automatic: it requires someone to inform the system. One unreported death is one ghost entry; repeated across lakhs of households, it becomes structural.[6]
• Migrants keep two lives on paper. A person who moves can be enrolled at the new address while the old entry lives on, because nothing systematically links the two.[6]
• Duplicates go undetected. The same elector can hold multiple entries, in the same or different constituencies, surviving annual revision after annual revision.[6]
• Cities outrun their rolls. In fast-growing areas, the addresses recorded on the roll stop matching reality: voters who have moved out, and residents who were never mapped.[6]

The Supreme Court accepted this as a legitimate purpose. The SIR's twin objectives (inclusion of eligible electors and exclusion of ineligible persons) are "deeply embedded in Articles 325 and 326", and the factors the Commission identified map directly onto the statutory grounds for deletion under Rule 21A of the 1960 Rules.[6]

How the exercise works, step by step

Step 1: Enumeration

Every elector on the roll as on the qualifying date receives a unique, partially pre-filled Enumeration Form. In Phase-II, the Commission directed that BLOs go "house-to-house at least thrice for the distribution and collection" of the forms, and electors could check their details (and a relative's) against the previous SIR roll on voters.eci.gov.in, book a call with their BLO on the ECINet app, or dial the 1950 helpline.[4]

Step 2: Documents

Electors not on the SIR's reference roll submit one or more documents from a prescribed list of eleven to establish eligibility. During the Bihar hearings, the Supreme Court added the Aadhaar card as a twelfth identity document, clarifying that it establishes identity, not citizenship. In Bihar, documents for 98.2 per cent of electors had been collected by 24 August 2025, eight days before the window closed.[2][6]

Step 3: The draft roll

The draft roll is published and shared booth-wise with political parties, and the list of names not carried into the draft is published with the reasons for exclusion, a step mandated by the Supreme Court during the proceedings, along with a direction to twelve political parties to deploy their Booth Level Agents to assist excluded voters.[1][6]

Step 4: Claims, objections and hearings

A one-month window follows (in Bihar, 1 August to 1 September 2025). Any elector, or political party, can file a claim or objection before the Electoral Registration Officer. And the rule the Commission underlined in its own release stands as the exercise's central safeguard:

"NO NAME CAN BE DELETED from the draft Electoral Roll, by the concerned ERO/AERO without giving a hearing to the elector and subsequently passing a written order, which are appealable to the DM and the CEO."

In other words: a doubtful entry triggers a show-cause notice, a hearing and a reasoned written order, appealable first to the District Magistrate and then to the Chief Electoral Officer under Section 24 of the RP Act, 1950.[1][3]

Step 5: The final roll

Once disposal of claims and objections is complete, the final roll is published (in Bihar, on 30 September 2025). After that, the roll returns to regular life: continuous updation, and Form 6 additions for those who were missed or have turned 18.[3][7]

The 26 September 2026 refinements

The Commission's latest operational decisions, taken in a full meeting, tightened the process further:

• BLOs will visit the homes of persons who received notices for unmapped or discrepant entries, collect and upload their documents on ECINet, with no need for the person to appear at the ERO/AERO office; hearings will be held only in exceptional cases, preferably online, and an adult family member can attend on the elector's behalf.[7]
• District Election Officers will set up help desks and hold special camps for people in night shelters, labourers, the poor and the homeless.[7]
• A committee headed by a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner, with an independent expert from an IIT/IIIT, will review ECINet for compliance with the Acts and Rules; all future IT-module changes will go to the Commission through the Committee of Officers.[7]

Three phases, one country

Phase I: Bihar (order of 24 June 2025)

The first and most closely watched phase, run from 24 June to 30 September 2025.[3]

Phase II: 12 States/UTs (order of 27 October 2025)

Nine States (Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) and three UTs (Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Puducherry): nearly 51 crore electors across 321 districts and 1,843 Assembly constituencies. Enumeration ran from 4 November to 4 December 2025, with over 5.3 lakh BLOs, 7.64 lakh BLAs, 10,448 EROs/AEROs and 321 DEOs in the field.[4]

Phase III: 19 States/UTs (announced 14 May 2026)

Sixteen States (Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Nagaland and Tripura) and three UTs (Chandigarh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, and Delhi): 36.73 crore electors, with 3.94 lakh BLOs and 3.42 lakh BLAs. The schedule was framed around the field machinery shared with the ongoing Census house-listing, and final publication was staggered from 6 September 2026 under the notified schedule, with Nagaland (22 November) and Tripura (23 December) scheduled last.[5]

Still to be scheduled

"The SIR of Electoral Rolls will cover the entire country in Phase-III except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh." These three await their schedules after the completion of Census Phase-II and consideration of weather in the upper reaches.[5]

For the first two phases together: 13 States/UTs, nearly 59 crore electors, over 6.3 lakh BLOs and 9.2 lakh BLAs appointed by political parties.[5]

Bihar: the first SIR, in numbers

Bihar is where the SIR's full arithmetic is officially on record, and the sequence matters more than any single figure (numbers rounded to the nearest lakh):[3]

• Where it started. 7.89 crore electors on the roll as on 24 June 2025, when the SIR was ordered.[3]
• What the enumeration found. More than 7.24 crore electors filled the Enumeration Forms. Sixty-five lakh names on the June roll were not carried into the draft published on 1 August 2025, leaving 7.24 crore electors in the draft.[1][3]
• What the process then changed. After the claims-and-objections round and hearings, 3.66 lakh ineligible entries were removed from the draft, and 21.53 lakh names were added through Form 6.[3]
• Where it ended. The final roll, published on 30 September 2025, contained nearly 7.42 crore electors, and Bihar went to the polls in November 2025 on that roll.[3][6]

Two process facts complete the picture. On participation: by 24 August 2025, 0.16 per cent of electors on the draft had filed claims or objections, and 3.28 lakh young electors (18 by 1 July or turning 18 by 1 October 2025) had filed Form 6 with the declaration. On the ground game: 90,712 polling booths, 243 Assembly constituencies, 38 District Election Officers, 243 EROs, 2,976 AEROs, around one lakh BLOs and over 1.6 lakh BLAs appointed by 12 political parties.[1][2][3]

Read together, the Bihar numbers settle the most common misreading of the SIR: the "65 lakh excluded" figure belongs to the draft stage. Non-inclusion in a draft roll is provisional: finality attaches only after scrutiny, notice, inquiry and hearing are complete, as the Supreme Court itself recorded.[3][6]

The Supreme Court verdict: what it upheld, and what it narrowed

Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India arose from writ petitions on the Bihar SIR: did the Commission have the power to order it, was the purpose legitimate and the design proportionate, was the procedure faithful to the RP Act and the 1960 Rules, and could the Commission scrutinise citizenship? On 27 May 2026, a Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi answered all four, dismissing the petitions.[6]

• The power exists, twice over. The Court held that Articles 324 and 327 are "complementary and not competing repositories of power", and that "parliamentary legislation cannot extinguish the constitutional functions vested in the Election Commission". Section 21(3) of the RP Act is an autonomous source of power for a special revision: its non-obstante clause frees the exercise from the constraints of an ordinary revision, and the words "at any time" vest the Commission with wide latitude. Article 324 remains plenary: the Commission can act in its own right, except where an express statutory prohibition applies.[6]
• The purpose was legitimate; the design proportionate. A problem that is systemic and accumulated over two decades can justify a statewide revision; the test is not whether the Court would have chosen a different method. The 2003 baseline was rational: the 2003 roll was itself the product of a rigorous intensive revision. The right to vote, though constitutional, is not absolute: it operates within a framework of verification and periodic revision. The safeguards built into the process, together with the correctives the Court itself introduced during the hearings, struck a fair balance between electoral integrity and inclusion.[6]
• The safeguards on paper, on the ground. The Court found Rule 21A's requirements (identification of doubtful entries, notice, and a reasoned determination after hearing) operationalised across the SIR's stages, with non-inclusion in the draft a provisional step. It also upheld two contested design choices: the exclusion of ration cards (on evidentiary reliability) and of the EPIC itself, because the identity card is issued on the basis of the very roll that is being verified.[6]
• Citizenship: inquiry yes, adjudication no. Citizenship is a condition for enrolment under Article 326 read with Section 16 of the RP Act, and the Commission may make a limited administrative inquiry for electoral purposes. But that inquiry cannot become final: where the Commission is not satisfied of eligibility, it must refer the person to the Competent Authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, and any deletion on this ground remains subject to that adjudication. For persons deleted from the 2003 roll on citizenship doubts, referrals were directed within four weeks, with the Competent Authority deciding after notice and hearing, preferably before the next election. If found to be citizens, they must be restored to the roll. Persons wrongly deleted as "absent, dead, shifted or duplicated" may seek judicial review.[6]

During the proceedings, the Court also directed publication of the list of excluded electors with reasons, required twelve political parties to deploy BLAs to assist affected voters, and added Aadhaar as the twelfth identity document under Section 23(4) of the RP Act: identity only, not citizenship.[6]

What happens next

• The final stretch. Twelve Phase-III States/UTs remain to publish final rolls. Delhi's claims-and-objections window runs to 30 October 2026 (disposal to 30 November), and Maharashtra's to 12 October 2026 (disposal to 10 November), both extended on 26 September 2026. Nagaland (22 November) and Tripura (23 December) are the last scheduled final publications.[5][7]
• The three deferred States/UTs. Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh will get their schedules after Census Phase-II and weather considerations.[5]
• Anyone left out. Any person missed during the SIR, including young and first-time voters, can still apply to the ERO for inclusion under continuous updation. CEOs, DEOs and EROs have been told to launch special enrolment drives; in Goa, BLOs re-visited left-out voters, and 81 of 97 have already filed Form 6.[7]
• The integrity question. The ECINet review committee (a Senior DEC plus an IIT/IIIT expert) will report on the statutory compliance of the IT ecosystem, and new IT initiatives will be routed through the Committee of Officers before Commission approval.[7]

Where things stand

• Ordered in phases (Bihar on 24 June 2025, Phase-II on 27 October 2025 and Phase-III on 14 May 2026), the SIR is complete in 20 States/UTs including Bihar and West Bengal; the final national figure awaits publication in the remaining 12 Phase-III States/UTs.[7]
• Bihar ran the full arc, from 7.89 crore electors (24 June 2025) to a draft roll of 7.24 crore (1 August 2025) and a final roll of nearly 7.42 crore (30 September 2025); elections followed in November 2025.[3][6]
• The Supreme Court upheld the exercise on 27 May 2026 (2026 INSC 564): power under Article 324 and Section 21(3), legitimate purpose, proportionate design, with citizenship determinations reserved to the Competent Authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955.[6]
• Deadlines on the move: Delhi (claims to 30 October; disposal to 30 November) and Maharashtra (to 12 October; disposal to 10 November); Nagaland and Tripura close the schedule in November-December 2026.[5][7]
• Relief valves stay open: no deletion without a hearing and a reasoned, appealable order; continuous updation and special enrolment drives for anyone missed.[1][3][7]

Quick answers

• What is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR)? A house-to-house intensive revision of the electoral roll, in which every entry is re-verified through enumeration, documents and a fresh claims-and-objections round, as distinct from the annual summary revision, which updates the roll only at the margins.[4][6]
• What is its legal basis? Article 324 of the Constitution, Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (with Section 21(3) enabling a special revision at any time), and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.[4][6]
• Can a name be deleted without notice? No. Per the SIR orders, no name can be deleted from the draft roll without a hearing and a written order, appealable to the District Magistrate and then the Chief Electoral Officer under Section 24 of the 1950 Act.[1][3]
• What did the Supreme Court hold? In ADR v. ECI (27 May 2026), the SIR was upheld as traceable to Article 324 and Section 21(3), legitimate in purpose and proportionate, but the Commission's citizenship inquiry is not final: such cases go to the Competent Authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955.[6]
• Was Aadhaar made mandatory? No. Aadhaar was added as a twelfth identity document during the Bihar proceedings, an option among the prescribed documents, establishing identity but not citizenship.[6]
• Which States remain? Twelve Phase-III States/UTs, including Delhi and Maharashtra on extended timelines; Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh will be scheduled separately after Census Phase-II.[5][7]

Sources

1. PIB: Draft Electoral Roll issued in Bihar today. Election Commission of India, 1 August 2025. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2151531
2. PIB: Bihar SIR: Documents of 98.2% Electors already received with 8 more days still left. Election Commission of India, 24 August 2025. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2160256
3. PIB: Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls in Bihar Successfully Completed. Election Commission of India, 30 September 2025. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2173316
4. PIB: Special Intensive Revision (SIR) Phase-II begins in 9 States and 3 UTs. Election Commission of India, 4 November 2025. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2186480
5. PIB: Special Intensive Revision, Phase III. Election Commission of India, 14 May 2026. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2260955
6. Supreme Court of India: Landmark Judgment Summary, Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India, W.P.(C) No. 640/2025, 2026 INSC 564 (27 May 2026). https://www.sci.gov.in/landmark-judgment-summaries/
7. PIB: Election Commission: decisions of the meeting of the Commission held on 26 September 2026. Election Commission of India, 26 September 2026. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2315309