EC top brass meets state chief poll officers to discuss pan-India SIR

New Delhi: The Election Commission top brass is meeting its state chief poll officers here on Wednesday to firm up its plans to roll out a pan-India special intensive revision to clean up voter lists.

The two-day meet is the second since September to decide on the massive exercise.

Officials said Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners S S Sandhu and Vivek Joshi are meeting all state chief electoral officers here. The confabulations will continue till Thursday.

One strong opinion within the top EC brass is to hold SIR in phases, beginning with the states going for assembly elections next year. More states may be included in the first phase.

At the same time, it will not hold the electoral roll cleanup exercise in states where local body elections are taking place or are due, as the grassroots poll machinery is busy with it and may not be able to focus on SIR, officials said Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are due in 2026.

Besides these five states, SIR could be held in a few other states in the first phase.

A voter list cleanup exercise has concluded in Bihar, where the final list with nearly 7.42 crore names was published on September 30.

The CEC had earlier this month said work is in progress to launch the SIR of electoral rolls in all states, and a final decision on its rollout will be taken by the Election Commission.

Responding to a question at a press conference to announce the Bihar assembly polls, the CEC had said the EC had announced its plan for a pan-India SIR while rolling out the Bihar SIR on June 24.

The work is on, and the three commissioners will meet to decide on dates for the states to launch their SIRs, he said.

According to officials, the EC last month asked the state chief electoral officers (CEOs) at a conference here to be ready for SIR rollout in the next 10 to 15 days. But for the sake of greater clarity, a September 30 deadline was set for the comprehensive cleanup exercise.

The CEOs have been told to keep ready the electoral rolls of their states published after the last SIR.

Several CEOs have already put the voter list published after their last SIR on their websites.

The website of the Delhi CEO has the voter list from 2008, when the last intensive revision took place in the national capital.

In Uttarakhand, the last SIR took place in 2006, and that year's electoral roll is now on the state CEO website.

The last SIR in states will serve as the cut-off date, just as the 2003 voter list of Bihar was used by the EC for intensive revision.

Most states had the last SIR of the voter list between 2002 and 2004.

Most of the states have nearly completed mapping of current electors with the voters according to the last SIR in the state or Union Territory (UT).

The primary aim of the SIR is to weed out foreign illegal migrants by checking their place of birth.

The move assumes significance in the wake of a crackdown in several states on illegal foreign migrants, mainly from Bangladesh and Myanmar.