Tamil Nadu CEO holds all-party meeting on SIR, urges parties to appoint BLAs

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik on Wednesday chaired an all party meeting here to discuss the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and urged political parties to appoint the Booth Level Agents (BLA) for the massive exercise.

The Election Commission is undertaking the SIR in Tamil Nadu and 11 other States and Union Territories.

The exercise is being undertaken after more than two decades to ensure that the electoral rolls are accurate and error free, an official release said.

Representatives of various political parties including the Aam Admi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, BJP, Communisty Party of India (Marxist), Indian National Congress, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam attended the meeting.

During the meeting, the CEO detailed the SIR process, training of booth level agents and their role in assisting electors.

The parties were also asked to appoint Booth Level Agents for each polling station, to ensure accuracy of the voter list, the release said.

A power point presentation on various activities and schedule for the SIR of Electoral Roll, 2026 was made during the meeting with the representatives of the political parties, who also expressed their views and suggestions.

From November 4 to December 4, the Booth Level Officers would conduct house-to-house enumeration, distribute pre-filled forms to all the existing electors, collect the filled forms, identify absent, shifted, dead or duplicate voters and register new eligible electors.

Officials said each household would be visited at least thrice to collect the filled out forms to ensure that no voter is left out, the release said.

During the pre-revision period, it said the Election department would carry out a rationalisation of polling stations by December 4, 2025 so that no polling station has more than 1,200 electors for ease of access by public.

The electors of attached polling stations are not required to travel for more than 2 km.

Eligible citizens aged 18 years and above as on January 1, 2026 are requested to cooperate with the Booth Level Officers during the house-to-house enumeration process.

Each citizen's participation is vital to ensuring a complete and error-free electoral roll, the release added.

The ruling DMK and its allies have opposed the SIR and the government has convened the all-party meet on November 2 to decide on the next course of action after the EC recently announced implementing the revision from next month in the poll-bound Tamil Nadu, among other states.