The ECI had on Monday announced Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls for 12 states and union territories, including four states and an UT that will have an assembly election in the first half of 2026: Reports
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India (ECI) is awaiting the final data on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam before starting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.
Though completed in 2019 the final list of the Supreme Court monitored NRC in Assam has not been notified by the Registrar General of India. The draft list excluded roughly 19.6 lakh voters out of 3.3 crore applicants leading to dissatisfaction among political parties, particularly the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The ECI had on Monday announced Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls for 12 states and union territories, including four states and an UT that will have an assembly election in the first half of 2026. However, Assam that too will have assembly polls around the same time was not mentioned in the list announced by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
Gyanesh Kumar clarified that in Assam the revision of electoral rolls will be announced separately since the citizenship provisions for the state "differs from the rest of the country" and the SC-monitored NRC process has not yet concluded.
“Assam has a separate provision in India’s citizenship laws. The Supreme Court-monitored citizenship identification process is about to conclude. In such a situation, the June 24 SIR order, which applied to the whole country, is not applicable to Assam. Revision instructions for the state will be issued separately,” Gyanesh Kumar said.
Assam has specific citizenship rules under Section 6A of the Citizenship Act as per provisions of Assam Accord.
Already the state is undergoing the Supreme Court monitored NRC, outcome of which is expected anytime now. Sources said the ECI felt it was prudent to wait for the final NRC list before going ahead with the SIR rather than creating more confusion and controversies by doing its own citizenship check. Sources said the NRC data will make ECI’s work faster and easier.
The Assam government has already requested the ECI to integrate the NRC data with the SIR and utilize the extensive verification already undertaken during the NRC process. However, the SC has also said that merely having name in NRC cannot annul the orders of Foreign Tribunals in the state declaring a person non-citizen of India.
The current nationwide SIR is the ninth such exercise since Independence, with the last one happening 21 years back in 2002-04. The one due in 2022 got postponed due to Covid-19 and elections in several states in 2023 followed by general elections in 2024.
The states and UTs that will witness the SIR from November 4 are 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 the polls in 2026. Apart from election bound states, the rest were chosen since they had completed mapping of data of voters with 2002-03 SIR.
