Election Commission to Begin Nationwide Voter List Revision Next Week in Key States

New Delhi: The Election Commission is planning to start the first phase of a nationwide voter list update, called Special Intensive Revision (SIR), next week. This process will begin in 10 to 15 states, including Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, and West Bengal, which are scheduled to have elections in 2026.

Announcement of First Phase

Officials said the commission could announce the first phase of SIR by the middle of next week. The revision will not be carried out in states where local body elections are ongoing or expected soon, as the ground-level election machinery will be busy and may not focus on the SIR. These states will undergo SIR in later phases.

SIR Completed in Bihar

Bihar has already completed its SIR, with a final voter list of about 7.42 crore names published on September 30. Voting in Bihar will take place in two phases on November 6 and November 11, with counting on November 14. The commission has held two meetings with the state’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to plan the SIR process. Several CEOs have already uploaded voter lists from previous SIRs on their official websites.

Status in Other States

The Delhi CEO’s website still has the voter list from 2008, which was the last major revision for the national capital. In Uttarakhand, the last SIR was in 2006, and that voter list is now available on the state CEO’s website. The Election Commission will use the last SIR in each state similarly to how Bihar’s 2003 voter list was used for intensive revision. In most states, the last SIR dates back to between 2002 and 2004.

Tamil Nadu SIR to Begin Next Week

The Election Commission informed the Madras High Court that the special intensive revision of voter lists in Tamil Nadu will start next week. This was communicated before a bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G. Arul Murugan. The court was hearing a petition by former AIADMK MLA B. Satyanarayanan, who requested a full and transparent revision of 229 polling stations in the T. Nagar constituency.

He claimed that authorities removed 13,000 AIADMK supporters’ names from the voter list in favor of the ruling DMK. Satyanarayanan said he lost the 2021 assembly election by just 137 votes because many genuine voters’ names were removed. His petition asked the commission to ensure that eligible voters’ names are included in the list.