A view of Nirvachan Sadan, the headquarters of Election Commission of India, in Delhi. File
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
Unlike Special Summary Revision (SSR) of electoral rolls undertaken annually and also before every Assembly or Lok Sabha polls, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) to be undertaken in Tamil Nadu this year would lead to creation of fresh list of eligible voters in the State, the Election Commission of India (ECI) told the Madras High Court on Monday (November 3, 2025).
Difference between SSR and SIR
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G. Arul Murugan, ECI standing counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan explained the difference between the SSR and SIR. He said, the SSR retains an existing list and requires only the voters who want inclusion or exclusion from the list to make applications in the prescribed formats.
On the other hand, the SIR requires every voter in the existing list too to submit an enumeration form which could be either downloaded from the ECI website or provided to the voters by the Booth Level Officers (BLOs). The BLOs shall collect one copy of the enumeration form and sign the acknowledgement of the receipt in the second copy to be retained by the voters.
The voters need not attach any other document while submitting the enumeration form and they would be required to do so only if there was any mismatch between the details filled by them in the enumeration form and the existing voters’ list. The BLOs would also conduct a door-to-door verification and find out the reasons if anyone had failed to submit the enumeration form.
Migrants from other States
On the other hand, the first time voters who want to get enrolled as a elector and those who had migrated to Tamil Nadu from other States would have to submit a declaration form along with supporting documents to prove their age and identity. The BLOs would always carry enough number of enumeration forms and declaration forms for distribution to all those who require them.
Final voters’ list in Feb 2026
Mr. Rajagopalan told the court the ECI had announced the conduct of SIR for Tamil Nadu and a few other States on October 27 and the training for the officials began the very next day. The training would get concluded on Monday (November 3). Subsequently, the enumeration phase would begin from Tuesday (November 4) and go on till December 4 this year.
The draft electoral roll would be published on December 9. Thereafter, claims against exclusion and third party objections against inclusion would be entertained from December 9 this year to January 8 next year. Inquiries on such claims and objections would also begin on December 9 and they would be concluded by January 31, 2026 in order to publish the final voters’ list on February 7.
Asserting the Constitution as well as the provisions of the Representation of the People Act of 1950 empower the ECI to conduct SSR as well as SIR, Mr. Rajagopalan said, the SIR had been conducted at least on 10 occasions in the past. He said, the SIR was conducted last in Tamil Nadu for 197 Assembly constituencies in 2002 and for the rest of the 37 constituencies in 2005.
Aims of SIR
He said, the aim of the SIR was to ensure no eligible citizen gets left out from the electoral rolls and no ineligible person gets included in the rolls. The submissions were made during the hearing of two writ petitions which insisted on purification of the electoral rolls in Tambaram as well as T. Nagar Assembly constituencies. However, another petition related to Karur was not listed for hearing today.
Hence, the Division Bench heard the submissions made by the ECI counsel and directed the High Court Registry to list all three writ petitions together on November 13.
Published – November 03, 2025 01:01 pm IST
