The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday announced a Special Summary Revision (SSR) of electoral rolls in 13 states and three Union Territories, along with Assam, where it has decided not to conduct the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
The exercise, with January 1, 2027, as the qualifying date, will begin in November. The EC has written to the chief electoral officers of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.
The revision comes ahead of Assembly elections scheduled in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa early next year.
According to the schedule issued by the EC, draft electoral rolls will be published on November 12. Voters will be able to file claims and objections until December 11, while the final rolls are scheduled for publication on January 4, 2027.
The Commission said the exercise would facilitate the enrolment of eligible voters for the January 1, 2027, qualifying date. It will also accept advance applications from people who become eligible on April 1, July 1 and October 1 next year.
Political parties will receive copies of the draft and final electoral rolls in a “readable PDF” format, replacing the image-based PDFs provided earlier.
The EC said the SSR schedule for states and Union Territories where the SIR is underway or has recently concluded would be announced separately. These include Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand, among others.
“…in order to facilitate the enrolment of eligible electors with reference to the qualifying date of 1st January, 2027 along with seeking advance applications for the three subsequent qualifying dates of 1st April, 1st July & 1st October, 2027, the Commission hereby directs that the existing electoral rolls shall be revised by conducting a Special Summary Revision (SSR) under Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950…,” the EC wrote as highlighted by the Indian Express.
For Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, where the SIR has not begun, the schedule for electoral roll revision will be announced later, taking local weather conditions into account.
The SSR will also involve a different approach to identifying potentially duplicate entries. While the EC’s centralised software for flagging “logical discrepancies” during the SIR has faced scrutiny, the Commission is likely to return to its earlier system for detecting demographically similar entries and photographically similar entries (DSE/PSE).
The system was not used during the SIR. In its instructions to chief electoral officers, the EC said confirmed cases of DSE/PSE, voters who had permanently shifted and deceased electors could be removed only after Form 7 was received from the elector or, in the case of a deceased person, a near relative or family member.
