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Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision under RPA 1950
The Election Commission of India (ECI) conducts a nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls from June 2025, beginning with Bihar. The process draws attention due to comparisons with procedures used during the 2002-04 revision and reported issues in the current SIR.
Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls:
| Dimension | Key Details |
|---|---|
| Conducting authority | The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to review and update electoral rolls. |
| Legal basis | Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, authorises the ECI to conduct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of a constituency in a manner it considers appropriate. |
| Objective | The SIR exercise provides for maintaining accurate electoral rolls by identifying deceased electors, duplicate entries, changes of residence, and eligible voters whose names may have been omitted. |
| 2002-04 SIR: Door-to-door enumeration | Enumerators conduct household visits using a preliminary electoral roll, and elected Panchayat members can voluntarily assist with the process. |
| 2002-04 SIR: Multi-level supervision checks | Guidelines mandate supervisory checks as follows: supervisors randomly verify at least 25% of households covered by enumerators and personally verify houses reported as locked after repeated visits; AEROs, EROs, and District Election Officers check at least 12%, 5%, and 2% of households, respectively. |
| 2002-04 SIR: Treatment of shifted electors | Shifted electors are treated as transfers, entries are retained in the preliminary list and marked with an “S,” enumerators record shift information and new address or constituency, supervisors personally verify cases where an entire family has moved, and the Chief Electoral Officer coordinates removal of old entries from the final roll. |
| 2002-04 SIR: Citizenship verification and objections | Guidelines place the burden of proving citizenship on applicants seeking first-time inclusion, refer to Supreme Court guidance requiring EROs to give adequate evidentiary value to an applicant’s presence on an existing electoral roll, provide for bulk claims and objections to be rejected summarily, and provide for the final roll to be prepared only after all claims and objections have been disposed of. |
| 2025-26 SIR: Draft roll exclusion reported | Electors unavailable during enumeration or who fail to submit forms are excluded from draft rolls, including previous voters. |
| 2025-26 SIR: Shifted electors and deletion notice | Unlike the 2002-04 exercise, shifted electors are not necessarily enrolled at their new addresses, and the ECI’s 2023 Manual on Electoral Rolls prescribes notice before deleting untraceable shifted electors. |
| 2025-26 SIR: Supervisory verification threshold | The Bihar SIR notification provides for random verification by supervisors at 10%, compared with 25% during 2002-04. |
| 2025-26 SIR: Establishing eligibility | Electors are required to trace their or their parents’ names in earlier electoral rolls or submit citizenship documents. |
| 2025-26 SIR: Automated discrepancy flags reported | Automated flags reportedly include spelling variations, more than 6 voters linked to one ancestor, and parent-child age gaps outside 15-45 years. |
| Bulk objections: ECI limit | The ECI has limited the number of objections an individual can file on October 9. |
| Scale of deletions reported | Approximately 13.3 crore voter entries have been deleted across the 3 phases of the current SIR. |
| Continuity of rolls during SIR | The proviso to Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, authorises existing pre-SIR rolls to remain in force for upcoming State elections while the revision is completed through due process. |