ECI Special Intensive Revision Phase 3: 36 Crore Voters 2026

The SIR is an exceptional, comprehensive exercise to purify and update electoral rolls from scratch, distinct from:

• Summary Revisions — routine annual updates conducted for each constituency.
• Intensive Revisions — typically held once every five years before a general or state assembly election.

The term “special intensive revision” appears in neither the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 nor the Representation of the People Act, 1950 as a defined category — though the ECI derives authority for it from existing statutory provisions.

The legal basis rests on two pillars:

• Article 324 of the Constitution — vests the ECI with superintendence, direction, and control over the preparation of electoral rolls. The Supreme Court in Mohinder Singh Gill v. Election Commissioner confirmed these powers are subject to judicial review when fundamental rights are violated, but are subordinate to no other authority.
• Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1950 — empowers the Commission to order a “special revision” of electoral rolls in any constituency at any time, without prior permission from any government.

The primary goal is “one person, one vote” — removing deceased voters, voters who have permanently shifted residence, duplicate entries, and non-citizens.

The SIR was announced nationally on 27 October 2025 by CEC Gyanesh Kumar at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. Its rollout was structured in phases to accommodate field machinery availability, state election calendars, and the concurrent Census House Listing operation.

The SIR follows a defined operational sequence combining field enumeration with legal safeguards:

• House-to-House Enumeration: Booth Level Officers (BLOs) — government functionaries assigned to specific polling booths — conduct door-to-door visits. Booth Level Agents (BLAs), nominated by registered political parties (one per booth), observe and participate as a check on arbitrary deletions.
• Aadhaar as 12th Document: Following Supreme Court directions in the Bihar SIR case, Aadhaar was formally recognised as the 12th document for proof of identity. The ECI clarified explicitly: Aadhaar establishes identity, not citizenship. No physical documents are to be collected during the house-to-house phase.
• Qualifying Date: The date by which a person must have turned 18 to be eligible. For Phase 3’s earlier sub-group (Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu), the qualifying date is 1 July 2026.
• Draft Publication and Grievance: A draft electoral roll is published for public scrutiny. For the earliest sub-group, draft publication is 5 July 2026; claims and objections run 5 July – 4 August 2026; final rolls: 6 September 2026. Deleted names must be published in searchable format at District Election Officer websites.
• Census Coordination: Phase 3 explicitly coordinates with the ongoing Census House Listing operation to maximise overlap between Census field machinery and BLO visits.

The SIR generated the landmark PIL Association for Democratic Reforms vs Govt. of NCT of Delhi & Others (WP Civil 640/2025), heard by a two-judge Supreme Court bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi over 29 hearing days before being reserved for judgment.

Petitioners — including the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), and activist Yogendra Yadav — challenged the Bihar SIR on three grounds:

• The original document list of 11 excluded Aadhaar and ration cards, placing unfair burden on the poor, migrants, and women.
• The cut-off date of 1 January 2003 was argued to be arbitrary and constitutionally infirm.
• The compressed timeline was unreasonable given Bihar’s exceptionally high migration rates (~75 lakh migrants).

The Court did not stay the SIR but issued significant interim directions on 14 August 2025: publish a district-wise, booth-level searchable list of over 65 lakh deleted voters by 19 August 2025; accept Aadhaar and EPIC as proof; publicise deleted names on TV, print, and radio. These directions shaped procedural safeguards for all subsequent phases.

On the political front, opposition parties including the INC, AITC, CPI(M), SP, DMK, and RJD have alleged the SIR is being used to disenfranchise minority and marginalised communities. Of the 38 lakh voters removed in Bihar, nearly 60% were women — linked by critics to documentation challenges from name and residence changes after marriage.

When completed across all phases, the SIR will constitute India’s most comprehensive electoral roll revision in decades — covering the entirety of a 99-crore electorate through house-to-house verification in a single coordinated exercise. Key dimensions of significance:

• Structural accuracy: Rapid urbanisation and inter-state migration leave millions registered at their original rural domicile while residing elsewhere. This inflates constituency registers in source areas and distorts polling station design. The SIR corrects this systematically.
• Universal adult franchise: The exercise’s long-term legitimacy rests on balancing roll purification against the constitutional guarantee of Article 326 (universal adult franchise). The Supreme Court’s reserved judgment in the Bihar case will set the legal parameters for all future intensive revisions.
• National security dimensions: The ECI has cited concerns about enrolment of undocumented immigrants — particularly in border states — as a justification for the scale of the exercise. Critics contest whether the SIR is the appropriate tool for citizenship verification.