Bhubaneswar: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday announced that the next phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls will commence in Odisha in April.
In an official notification, the ECI asked Chief Electoral Officers of the 22 States and Union Territories (UTs) to initiate preparatory activities for the large-scale exercise.
According to the ECI, the next round of SIR will be carried out in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Ladakh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, and Uttarakhand.
The ECI said that detailed schedules for the upcoming SIR exercise will be released later. No elections will be held in any of the above-mentioned States or UTs this year.
The SIR exercise was first launched in June in Bihar and was later expanded to other States, including West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, according to media reports.
The drive includes house-to-house verification to update electoral records, remove duplicate or ineligible names, and ensure that all eligible citizens are properly enrolled.
Meanwhile, the legal framework and procedures of the exercise are under judicial scrutiny, with the Supreme Court currently hearing multiple petitions challenging various aspects of the process.
