SR vs SIR: Flip flops in Assam raise eyebrows

Days after ruling out a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Assam, what prompted the Election Commission to take a U-turn and announce a ‘Special Revision’? No answer has been forthcoming, adding to the distrust about the exercise in Assam.

The CEC had initially explained that Assam, where assembly elections are due in 2026, was being left out because of the incomplete process of National Register of Citizens (NRC) continuing in the state since 2013. The process has not been completed because the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 refused to accept the exercise throwing up more Hindus as ‘Doubtful Voters’ than Muslims.

What then prompted the ECI to change its mind? Unlike in Bihar or West Bengal, the Special Revision is going to be a tailored approach under which voters in Assam will not have to submit documents or establish that their parents and relatives were on the electoral rolls earlier.

Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) president Lurinjyoti Gogoi told NH, “the SR exercise is a “dangerous conspiracy” to protect the interests of Assam’s current rulers led by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma… In Assam, there is a history of struggle involving the citizenship issue and we believe that an SR exercise can only be carried out after the NRC process is complete”.

How is SR going to be different from SIR? In Assam, SR will involve physical verification and updating of the existing rolls without addressing the citizenship status. Booth level officers (BLOs) will visit every household using pre-filled forms containing the details of existing electors. Unlike the SIR, where new, blank enumeration forms are distributed, the exercise in Assam will focus on verifying and correcting the existing list.

It will use 1 January 2026, as the qualifying date; which means any citizen who turns 18 by that date will be eligible for enrolment. The exercise will focus on four areas: include newly eligible citizens, delete the names of deceased electors, remove electors who have permanently shifted residence and correct errors in existing entries.

Gogoi also points to the controversial statement during a media briefing by the Chief Electoral Officer Anurag Goyal. The CEO is quoted as saying that electors in Assam would be able to enlist their names even two days before the polling. Under the rules applied to Bihar, electors were allowed to be enlisted till 10 days before the last date of nominations, triggering a huge controversy.

It also led to a sudden increase in the number of voters by over three lakhs between the first and the second phase of polling. How is it even possible to include names in the rolls just 48 hours before the polling? Was it just a slip of the tongue or is there more than meets the eyes?

The ECI’s statement that the ‘D’ voters (Doubtful Voters) will figure in the voters’ list has added yet another layer of controversy in Assam. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) was meant to be a registry of people living in the state, created to identify genuine Indian citizens from illegal immigrants.

The Supreme Court-monitored exercise, started in 2013 and completed after six years in 2019, was based on applicants proving their presence in Assam before the 24 March 1971, which was the cut-off date.

While it is a list of Indian citizens, it excluded approximately 19 lakh people, whose citizenship status remains unresolved as of today, with nearly 10,000 disputes pending before the foreigners’ tribunals. Although the unstated goal of the NRC exercise was to identify illegal Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, what came as a surprise was that, among the 19 lakh suspected foreigners, there were more Bengali Hindus than Muslims.

Such an outcome was unacceptable to the BJP which came to power in Assam in 2016, pushing an aggressive Hindutva agenda and accusing its predecessor Congress governments of soft-pedalling the foreigners’ issue. Reconciling SR and NRC data would be impossible unless these disputes are resolved, points out Gogoi.

On the question of doubtful voters or 'D' voters, suspected illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who remain on the rolls but are not allowed to vote, the EC has taken the position that their particulars will be carried forward to the draft electoral roll without any change. "Any modification, including removal or deletion, shall be made only upon receipt of any order from the competent foreigner tribunal or an appropriate court of law," observed the EC. As of now, ‘D-voters’ will not be covered under the SR, with the state currently having 94,277 such names.

“We are doubtful about the entire SR process in Assam,” says Bhaskar Jyoti Baruah, Congress MLA from Titabor. Referring to the due process of including new eligible votes, which includes verification of their citizenship status, Baruah said the provision of inclusion of names just before the election could tilt the scale in favour of the BJP. Rajen Gohain, who recently quit the BJP to join the AJP, agrees.

Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) chief Gaurav Gogoi has alleged that chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was attempting to include voters from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in Assam’s electoral rolls. "Assamese people do not like Sarma and he is the biggest liability for the BJP. That is why the CM is trying hard to include the names of people from other states in the voters list," Gaurav Gogoi told his colleagues at a recent party programme in Dhubri.

The apprehensions expressed by Assam’s Opposition parties may have some basis, explains a senior retired bureaucrats in Guwahati. “The SR process has just about started. Those who have been evicted can also apply for inclusion in the electoral list using Form 8. It will be interesting to see how this form is used,” he pointed out.

Former Rajya Sabha member and a former State Election Commissioner in West Bengal Jawhar Sircar points out that from 2021, Sarma started an “aggressive campaign to 'free' government or forest land of 'encroachments', and records will prove that almost all such ruthless evictions have been directed against Bengali-speaking Muslims.

This too will make it difficult for the displaced to enlist themselves and the design is not just to disenfranchise them but also hand over the land ‘freed’ to friendly industrialists, suspected a People’s tribunal that visited Dima Hasao and Kamrup districts in early August, 2025.

(Sourabh Sen is a Kolkata-based independent writer and commentator on politics, human rights and foreign affairs)