Congress delegation meets Maha Chief Electoral Officer, demands impartial SIR

Maharashtra Congress delegation met Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) S Chockalingam on Thursday (April 2, 2026) and submitted a memorandum, demanding that the upcoming Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of electoral rolls should be in a “fair and transparent manner”. 

“The complaints that voters belonging to specific castes and religions were deliberately excluded, large-scale irregularities have been reported in SIR drives that might have benefited the ruling party,” said State Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal, demanding that the SIR exercise in Maharashtra be carried out impartially and without haste. 

The memorandum read, “The SIR exercise in other states of India was implemented hastily ahead of the elections, creating the atmosphere of confusion, panic, suspicion, and distrust of the system. So we present our concerns and suggestions.” 

The memorandum was authorised by Congress Legislature Party leader Vijay Wadettiwar, former minister and Congress Working Committee member Naseem Khan, AICC Secretary and Telangana co-incharge Sachin Sawant, State General Secretary Adv. Sandesh Kondvilkar and State General Secretary Abhijit Sapkal.

Mr Sapkal also pointed out that the SIR process was previously conducted in Maharashtra between 2002 04 over a period of nearly 13 months. Similarly, after 25 years, the process should be planned keeping in mind the increase of 3.5 crore voters. Even if the process takes 1.5 to 2 years, there is no haste as the state has no elections lined up for the next 2–3 years. 

Congress has also asked for SIR data in soft copy, OCR, or machine-readable formats, as well as hard copies, with a minimum one-month period to raise objections and respond to notices related to the SIR.

“Before deleting any voter’s name, at least seven days’ notice must be given to the voter for explanation, while a special drive should be undertaken for Booth Level Agent (BLA) registration. The entire SIR data should be preserved for at least five years at the ERO and DEO levels and made available to political parties as required,” he added.