Election Commission to begin SIR next week in poll bound Tamil Nadu

As Tamil Nadu prepares to head to the polls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has assured the Madras High Court that a special intensive revision (SIR) of the state’s electoral rolls will commence next week, synchronised with similar exercises in other states facing elections. The submission was made before a bench comprising chief justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and justice G. Arul Murugan on Friday, 24 October.

The announcement comes amid a petition filed by former AIADMK legislator B. Sathyanarayanan, who has raised concerns over alleged irregularities in Chennai’s T Nagar constituency. The petitioner claimed that 13,000 AIADMK supporters’ names were removed from the voter list, while names of deceased voters were not deleted, pointing to a glaring discrepancy between the constituency’s population and the registered electorate.

In his plea, Sathyanarayanan highlighted that while the constituency had 2,08,349 voters in 1998, the increase in voters by 2021 was a mere 36,656, raising suspicions of selective manipulation.

He urged the court to direct the ECI to conduct a complete and transparent re-verification of the voters list across all 229 booths in T Nagar ahead of the 2026 assembly elections, ensuring that incorrect deletions and inclusions are rectified before final publication.

The ECI assured the court that the SIR process will take into account the petitioner’s complaints and would be conducted in a manner similar to the recent exercise in Bihar, which had sought to cleanse the rolls of inaccuracies. The bench, acknowledging the urgency and importance of the matter, posted the case to next week and directed the Election Commission to submit copies of the Supreme Court’s orders issued in connection with the Bihar SIR for reference.

With elections around the corner, the process underscores the ECI’s commitment to clean, credible, and transparent electoral rolls, balancing the need for procedural diligence with the imperative of public trust in the democratic process.

With PTI inputs