Election Commission begins voters' list cleanup in 12 states, UTs to weed out ‘illegal foreign migrants’

THE Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR), aimed at updating and cleaning the voters’ list, will begin on Tuesday in nine states and three Union territories.

The exercise, covering 51 crore voters, is set to conclude on February 7, 2026, when the final electoral rolls will be published.

This is the second phase of SIR after Bihar, where the final voter list, containing nearly 7.42 crore names, was released on 30 September.

List of states, UTs where the second round of SIR will be conducted:

The 12 states and Union territories where the second round of SIR will be conducted are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Among these, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal will go to polls in 2026.

In Assam, another state where polls are due in 2026, the revision of electoral rolls will be announced separately as a Supreme Court-supervised exercise to verify citizenship is underway in the state.

Also, a separate provision of the Citizenship Act was applicable to Assam.

“Under the Citizenship Act, there are separate provisions for citizenship in Assam. Under the supervision of the Supreme Court, the exercise of checking citizenship is about to be completed. The June 24 SIR order was for the entire country. Under such circumstances, this would not have applied to Assam,” Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said on October 27 while announcing the latest phase of SIR.

“So there will be separate revision orders issued for Assam, and a separate SIR date will be announced,” he said.

SIR will begin on November 4 with the enumeration stage and continue till December 4.

The EC will release the draft electoral rolls on December 9, and the final electoral rolls will be published on February 7. The ongoing SIR is the ninth such exercise since independence, with the last one conducted in 2002-04.

The EC is of the view that SIR will ensure that no eligible elector is left out and no ineligible elector is included in the electoral rolls.

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 between 2002 and 2004, and they have nearly completed the mapping of current electors according to it.

What is the objective of SIR?

The primary aim of SIR is to weed out illegal foreign migrants by checking their place of birth. The move assumes significance in the wake of a crackdown in various states on illegal migrants, including those from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

When SIR was launched in Bihar in June, several political parties claimed that it would disenfranchise crores of eligible citizens for want of documents.

When the matter reached the Supreme Court, the EC defended its decision to clean up the voters' list and assured that no eligible citizen of India would be left out.

After the final voters' list was published, the opposition's attack on SIR and the EC has been muted.

Ahead of SIR in 12 states and Union territories, several political parties in Tamil Nadu on Sunday resolved to approach the Supreme Court against the exercise in the state.

This time, the Election Commission has included Bihar's post-SIR voter list and Aadhaar cards among the indicative documents that voters may need to submit in the 12 states and Union territories.

Unlike the rules followed during Bihar's SIR, the EC has now instructed its field officials that voters do not need to submit documents at the enumeration stage.

Only those who cannot be linked to the previous SIR of their state will be required to provide documents after receiving a notice from the electoral registration officer.