After a day-long meeting of EC’s state chief electoral officers here, officials said that with as many as five Assembly polls due next year, the all-India SIR could take place in the coming months in 2025. While senior EC officials made a presentation on the SIR policy of the Commission, the chief electoral officer of Bihar shared the state’s experience in implementing the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.
The CEOs were told to keep the electoral rolls of their states, published after the last SIR, ready. Some state CEOs have already put the voter list published after their last SIR on their websites. The Commission has said that after Bihar, SIR will be carried out in the entire country.
Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are due in 2026. The primary aim of the intensive revision is to weed out foreign illegal migrants by checking their place of birth. The move assumes significance in the wake of a crackdown in various states on illegal foreign migrants, including from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Eventually, the poll authority will begin SIR in the entire country “for the discharge of its constitutional mandate to protect the integrity of the electoral rolls.” As part of the intense review, poll officials will carry out house-to-house verification to ensure an error-free voters’ list.
Amid allegations by opposition parties that the EC has fudged voter data to help the BJP, the poll panel has taken additional steps in the intensive revision to ensure illegal migrants do not get enrolled in the voter list. An additional ‘declaration form’ has been introduced for a category of applicants seeking to become electors or shifting from outside the state. They will have to give an undertaking that they were born in India before July 1, 1987, and provide any document establishing the date of birth and/or place of birth.
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