EC asks 17 states, 5 UTs to prepare for final phase of SIR

40 crore voters to be covered; exercise likely to begin in April

New Delhi: The Election Commission on Thursday asked 22 states and Union territories including Delhi to complete preparatory work related to the special intensive revision (SIR) at the earliest as the exercise is “expected to start from April”.

Once the exercise is completed, all states and UTs will be covered.

In a letter to the chief electoral officers of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Ladakh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana and Uttarakhand, the poll authority said pan-India SIR of voters’ list was ordered in June last year.

Battling “vote chori” allegations levelled by the Opposition Congress, the Election Commission held the SIR of electoral rolls in 13 states and UTs and a ‘special revision’ in Assam this year. It is all set to hold a similar exercise in the remaining 22 states and UTs this year.

While the exercise, which kept the EC in the news, was completed in Bihar, it is ongoing in 12 states and UTs with nearly 60 crore electors.

The remaining 40 crore electors will be covered in these 17 states and five UTs.In Assam, a ‘special revision’, instead of SIR, was completed on February 10.

Due to a variety of reasons, SIR in the nine states and three UTs have seen frequent tweaking in schedules. Like Bihar, political parties have approached the Supreme Court challenging SIR in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

Recently, TMC president and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee personally pleaded before a bench of the Chief Justice of India against the poll roll cleanup exercise in her state.

As the EC was preparing for SIR in Bihar, its officials had claimed that several nationals from Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar were found by its grassroots level functionaries.

But eventually, the poll authority did not share any numbers or proof of such people who were not eligible to be on

the voters’ list. Opposition parties had dubbed the EC’s claims as a ploy to carry out SIR to target electors not aligned to BJP and its allies.