A crucial meeting of the Election Commission with its state officials to discuss preparations for a pan-India rollout of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was held on Wednesday.
The meeting discussed the preparedness of states regarding SIR, the poll panel sources said. The state CEOs affirmed that groundwork would be concluded this month.
The Election Commission will hold more meetings with the northeastern states on Thursday. Sources said no date has been decided yet, but a nationwide SIR could be announced very soon.
The EC officials presented the Commission’s SIR policy. The chief electoral officer of Bihar also shared the state’s experience in implementing SIR.
This is the third meeting of CEOs since Gyanesh Kumar took over as the chief election commissioner in February. However, Wednesday’s day-long meeting assumes significance as officials discuss the preparedness of a pan-India SIR.
The Commission has said that after Bihar, SIR will be carried out in the entire country.
There are indications that the exercise will commence later this year, ahead of the 2026 assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal.
The primary aim of the intensive revision is to weed out foreign illegal migrants by checking their place of birth.
The move assumes significance in the wake of a crackdown in various states on illegal foreign migrants, including from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Eventually, the poll authority will begin SIR in the entire country “for the discharge of its constitutional mandate to protect the integrity of the electoral rolls”.
As part of the intense review, poll officials will carry out house-to-house verification to ensure an error-free voters’ list.
Amid allegations by opposition parties that the EC has fudged voter data to help the BJP, the poll panel has taken additional steps in the intensive revision to ensure illegal migrants do not get enrolled in the voters’ list.
An additional ‘declaration form’ has been introduced for applicants seeking to become electors or shifting from outside the state.They will have to undertake that they were born in India before July 1, 1987, and provide any document establishing theirdate of birth and/or place of birth.
One of the options listed in the declaration form is that they were born in India between July 1, 1987 and December 2, 2004.
They will also have to submit documents about the date/place of birth of their parents.
However, the revision of the Bihar voters’ list has come under attack from opposition parties, which claim crores of eligible citizens will be deprived of voting rights due to a lack of documents.
The Supreme Court has asked the EC to ensure that no eligible citizen is left behind. Some state chief electoral officers have started publishing voters’ lists after the last SIR held in their states.
The primary aim of the intensive revision is to weed out foreign illegal migrants by checking their place of birth.
Most of the states carried out a revision of the electoral rolls between 2002 and 2004.
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