The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls

What SIR is

A Special Intensive Revision is a full, house-to-house re-enumeration of an electoral roll: enumerators distribute pre-filled forms, electors verify or correct their entries, and names are checked against an earlier “intensive” roll. It is a much heavier exercise than the routine Special Summary Revision, which merely updates the standing roll without door-to-door verification. The Election Commission’s stated aim is to strip out entries that are deceased, shifted, duplicated or otherwise ineligible, and to detect non-citizens. The contested part is the mechanism: SIR shifts the onus of proof of eligibility onto the voter, who must produce documents to stay on the roll — which critics argue risks removing eligible citizens who cannot.

Where it stands, as of 7 October 2026

The Commission’s own account is in its press note of 26 September 2026: the SIR order of 24 June 2025 covered all states and UTs, beginning with Bihar; schedules followed for 12 states and UTs on 27 October 2025 (Phase II) and for 19 on 14 May 2026 (Phase III), each, it says, with the unanimous approval of the Commission; SIR is now complete in 20 states and UTs, and “the final figure of number of electors will be known only after final publication in the remaining 12 states of Phase-III” (PIB). The same note extended claims-and-objections windows in Delhi and Maharashtra and ordered a special drive to enrol electors left out.

The scale is still not stated by the Commission as a single national number. The figures in circulation are each someone’s count, and we label them so:

• Maharashtra (official): of 9,78,54,049 electors on the pre-revision roll, 7,71,65,562 (78.86%) were included in the draft published on 31 August 2026, and 2,06,88,487 (21.14%) were not, because their enumeration forms were not collected — the Chief Electoral Officer’s press note lists absent, shifted, dead, duplicate and “other” as the reasons (CEO Maharashtra).
• Karnataka (reported): the draft roll held 4.4 crore electors against 5.5 crore before the exercise, a 19.4% exclusion, with final publication scheduled for 27 October (Scroll).
• Earlier Phase III drafts: Odisha removed over 20 lakh electors; Mizoram removed 46,163, and its CEO said no foreign nationals were found.
• National aggregates (reported, not ECI): PTI put deletions at nearly 6 crore at the one-year mark in June; The Indian Express reported in September that more than 13 crore names had been taken off draft rolls across 30 states and UTs. A draft-roll exclusion is not yet a final deletion — Maharashtra’s CEO states excluded electors may apply in Form 6 before final publication — so draft and final figures should not be added together.

The Supreme Court

The revision was challenged in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India. The Court declined to stay it but directed the ECI to consider Aadhaar, the voter-ID and ration cards and to publish booth-level lists of deleted electors with reasons; the Commission accepted Aadhaar and EPIC as proof of identity, not citizenship. On 27 May 2026 the Court upheld the Bihar SIR as consistent with the Representation of the People Act and not disproportionate (Supreme Court Observer).

A second round is now open. On 5 October 2026 a bench of the Chief Justice and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana issued notice to the Union and the Commission on a petition alleging that the Chief Election Commissioner took SIR decisions without the concurrence of the other two Commissioners. It declined to suspend the CEC or to order interim relief, and observed that Commission decisions must be unanimous or by majority and that it presumed this had been followed (Free Press Journal). Separately, the law under which all three Commissioners were appointed is itself before the Court: a bench split on 23 September over whether the challenge to the 2023 appointments Act needs a Constitution Bench, and sent the matter to the Chief Justice (ANI).

Inside the Commission: the objections on record

On 23 September 2026 The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to SIR-related decisions and orders they said were issued without their knowledge — on new-voter registration, deletion and restoration of names, appeals against restorations, and custody and access to the electoral-roll database (ERONET/ECINET), including letters to the Cabinet Secretary (The Indian Express). The report presents written objections; it does not claim that any election result was altered.

The Commission’s answer came in two steps. The same day it said differing views during drafting are routine and that its final decisions over the past year were unanimous (Business Standard). On 26 September a press note carrying “the approval of the full Commission” said the letter to the Cabinet Secretary concerned an officer on deputation rather than policy, that the contested work-redistribution order was never implemented, and announced procedural changes: agendas and minutes for every Commission meeting, compliance with Commissioners’ directions to officers, and a committee including an IIT/IIIT expert to review whether ECINET access matches statutory powers (PIB).

The Form 6 question

Form 6 is the statutory application for inclusion in the roll, prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. During SIR the online form carried an additional declaration asking whether the applicant, a parent or a grandparent appeared in the roll of the last SIR. The Indian Express reported that Joshi had warned in May that the form could not be changed without amending the rules, and that Sandhu recorded in August that the change was “unauthorised and illegal”. The Commission’s position, in its 26 September note, is that “the declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court” and that outside SIR periods the forms under the 1960 Rules apply (PIB). At the 5 October hearing the Chief Justice said: “Any modified Form 6 has not been approved by us… When the record is produced, we would like to see who has modified” (Onmanorama). Both statements are on the record; the Court has said it will examine the Commission’s files, and this brief does not anticipate that finding.

The dispute reaches the street

Protests demanding the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation began on 25 September and continued into October, led by opposition parties, student groups and the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party. Thousands marched in Mumbai on 4 October; Delhi Police detained protesters on successive days; and on 6 October opposition MPs marching from Parliament to the Commission were briefly detained (Al Jazeera, 4 October; Al Jazeera, 6 October). The demands stated by the organisers include the CEC’s resignation, rollback of SIR, use of pre-SIR rolls and, from some parties, ballot-paper voting.

The positions, attributed

• The opposition parties. The SIR has disenfranchised eligible voters to the ruling party’s benefit and the Commission is not independent; the Congress president called it “a puppet in the hands of the government” (Al Jazeera, 6 October). Twenty-three parties and an Independent MP had earlier written to the Chief Justice alleging partisanship (30 June 2026).
• The Commission. SIR removes duplicate, deceased and ineligible entries; its orders were unanimous and lawful; left-out electors can apply and a special enrolment drive is under way. The CEC has described the revised rolls as more accurate and, as Al Jazeera reported on 4 October, had not publicly responded to the resignation demand.
• The ruling party. The BJP denies the allegations; its spokesperson accused the Congress of attacking institutions after electoral defeats (Al Jazeera, 6 October).
• Two of the Commissioners, on the reported record, objected to specific decisions and to the Form 6 change; the Commission’s joint note of 26 September is signed off by all three.

The international channel

Three UN special rapporteurs sent the government a joint communication dated 1 May 2026 questioning the revision, citing 52 million Phase II removals and the alleged targeting of Bengali and Muslim electors, as reported by SabrangIndia. We have not retrieved the OHCHR document and found no government or ECI response on the record; the account is tiered accordingly.

Bihar and the 2026 polls, now archive

The Bihar exercise (ordered 24 June 2025) used the 2003 roll as its reference base; its final roll of 30 September 2025 was widely reported as removing about 47 lakh names, while PTI has put Bihar’s pruning at nearly 65 lakh — a draft-versus-final gap we flag rather than reconcile. The April 2026 assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal were conducted on Phase II rolls, which is why the accuracy dispute is retrospective as well as prospective.

Who owns this topic (and why we’re here)

Searches for “SIR electoral rolls” surface the primary layer — the ECI site, PIB, state Chief Electoral Officer portals — and wire copy of each day’s protest or hearing, but no maintained explainer that ties the thread together with its provenance intact. This brief is that: one sourced, compacted state of play across the origin, the court record, the nationwide rollout, the internal dispute and the street, anchored to a structured Election Commission dossier.

Maintained topic brief. Analysis by IndiaStand — it characterises the state of play and attributes each claim; it makes no forecast and offers no recommendation.