Voters' List Cleanup Exercise in 12 States and UTs Begins Today

No Need for Apprehension Over SIR, Poll Panel Submits in Madras HC

PTI,  NEW DELHI/CHENNAI, NOV 3, 2025 : Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Election Commission's voters' list cleanup exercise, will commence in nine states and three Union Territories (UTs) 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 added.

SIR will begin on November 4 with the enumeration stage and continue until December 4. The Election Commission (EC) will release the draft electoral rolls on December 9, and the final electoral rolls will be published on February 7.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India, on Monday, submitted before the Madras High Court that there was no need for any apprehension over the SIR exercise and that the final electoral rolls will be published only after considering the objections. The EC's counsel, Niranjan Rajagopal, made the submission before a bench of Chief Justice MM Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan. The bench was hearing a plea from former AIADMK MLA Sathyanarayanan and party advocate Vinayagam, seeking a direction to the EC to consider their request for the deletion of, among others, double entries and deceased voters in T. Nagar and Tambaram Assembly segments.

The Election Commission told the court that the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls will start in Tamil Nadu from Tuesday onwards. Every voter needs to fill up forms, and the draft roll will be published on December 9, with objections being raised at that time. Only after this will the final voters' list be published. Since 1950, 10 such exercises have been held, and the SIR activity is being taken up in Tamil Nadu after 2005, the EC said. There was no need for any apprehension over SIR, the EC submitted.