SIR in 12 states but not in Assam, says ECI; Yogendra Yadav poses 14 questions

The ECI (Election Commission of India) on Monday, 27 October, corrected two glaring mistakes it had made while announcing the Special Intensive Revision(SIR) in Bihar on 24 June, 2025. While the Commission had announced the exercise from the very next day in Bihar, it had provided no time for printing of the enumeration forms and training of BLOs, raising eyebrows.

Today, on 27 October, the Election Commission seemed more cautious, announcing that both printing and training would commence from 28 October. The house-to-house enumeration will start on 4 November and will continue for a month till 4 December. In Bihar, the ECI had sown confusion by ordering printing, training and enumeration together between 25 June and 25 July. The Commission does seem to have learnt its lessons.

The Chief Electoral Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar announced that the draft rolls will be published on 8 December 2025 and objections received from 9 December till 8 January 2026.

Hearings for those served notices will continue till 31 January 2026, and the final electoral rolls will be published on 7 February.

The 12 states and UTs where the SIR will begin from 28 October are Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Goa besides in Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry.

Intriguingly, the ECI stated that revision of electoral rolls in Assam will be announced separately. No SIR was announced for the State in this phase despite Assembly elections are due in Assam too in 2026.

There is no clarity whether SIR will be announced in Assam in 2025 or after the phase 2 of the SIR gets over on 7 February, 2026. It is also not clarified if the Assam government had asked the ECI or the government to defer the exercise, although Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had stated on record that Assam would welcome an SIR in the state to weed out non-citizens.

Unlike in Bihar, the list of documents sought by ECI for this round of SIR does include Aadhaar as the 12^th document. In the case of Bihar, the Supreme Court had to intervene and direct the ECI to include it as one of the documents.

This time, Aadhaar does figure in the list of documents but the CEC once again pointed out that it was neither proof of citizenship nor of domicile. However, it can still be furnished as identity proof during the SIR exercise, the CEC added without elaborating what purpose Aadhaar might serve. In the case of Bihar, the Supreme Court had directed the ECI to accept Aadhaar as proof of identity and domicile and in case of suspicious cases, carry out physical verification.   

The CEC also reiterated that the BLOs in the 12 states and UTs will visit each house thrice and that migrant voters can now submit their enumeration forms online. The CEC clarified that except the enumeration form, no other documents will be collected during the enumeration phase.

Meanwhile, activist Yogendra Yadav, who was one of the petitioners to challenge SIR in Bihar (the case is still pending before the Supreme Court where the challenge is yet to be addressed), posed 14 questions to the Election Commission of India. Some of these 14 questions he put out on social media are the following:

1. What has the ECI learnt from the experience of SIR in Bihar? What are the modifications in the original SIR order in the light of these learning’s?

2. On what basis does the ECI treat 2002/2003 as the cutoff year, now that we know that no verification of citizenship took place during the intensive revision in that year? (The 2002 Guidelines, withheld from the public by the ECI, clearly show that there was no enumeration form, no documents were asked and verification of citizenship was prohibited then)

3. Does the exclusion of illegal foreigners continue to be one of the objectives of SIR? If so, how many foreigners were detected and deleted from the electoral rolls in Bihar? (The SIR order mentioned this as an objective but no data has been given thereafter)

4. If Aadhaar is not accepted as stand-alone document since it is not a proof of citizenship, why are 9 other documents (all except Passport and Birth certificate) accepted as stand-alone documents, since none of them is a proof of citizenship?

5. Who exactly gets the exemption on the basis of having their name in the electoral rolls of 2002/2003 ? They themselves, their children or anyone related to them? (The ECI has changed its position several times, without any amendment to the original SIR order which limited the exemption to the person. In Bihar Vanshavali was used to extend the exemption to anyone related to that person.

6. Has the ECI changed its house to house visit protocol to allow for addition of new voters in the Draft Electoral Rolls? (Not a single new voter was added in Bihar till the publication of draft rolls on 1 August, while 65 lakh voters were excluded. Addition happened only during the claim and objection phase)

7. How would the ECI ensure an acknowledgement to everyone who submits an Enumeration Forms or a document? (In Bihar hardly anyone got acknowledgement despite clear provision for it in the SIR order)

8. Did the ECI come across any case of forgery by the BLO or others in filling enumeration Forms on behalf of someone else, without their knowledge or consent? How is that to be prevented? (There were widespread reports of BLOs filling Enumeration Forms to meet targets)

9. Has the ECI thought of any special arrangement to ensure that migrant workers are not left out of the draft electoral rolls? (Widespread reports of hardship and exclusion faced by seasonal migrants and their inability to use ECI App).

10.  What steps has the ECI taken to ensure that SIR does not lead to a fall in the gender ratio in the electoral rolls, as it did in Bihar? (The ECI affidavit in the Supreme Court admits the veracity of this data)

11.    Does the ECI plan to offer those excluded from the Draft Electoral Rolls the usual legal remedies of notice and hearing? (These were denied to the 65 lakh persons excluded in Bihar; they had to re-enter as “new voters”)

12.     Why does the list of acceptable documents not include PAN Card, Driving License, MNREGA job card, ration card and passbook of nationalised banks all of which are accepted for a new voters by the ECI today and have higher evidentiary value?

13. Does the ECI have a de-duplication software? Does it plan to integrate that in the SIR process? (Lakhs of duplicate and junk entires have been found in the final electoral rolls of Bihar)

14. Does the ECI plan to release machine readable files of the draft and final electoral rolls? What is the problem in publishing this data which is public information anyway?