Special Intensive Revision 2026: what the nationwide roll revision is actually doing
On June 30 the Election Commission began the exercise in Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi. It reaches into every household that votes, and the Supreme Court has already ruled on its legality.
By Imran Khan · Senior Reporter, Politics
The short version
- The Election Commission began the Special Intensive Revision in Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi on June 30, 2026.
- The exercise works through house-to-house enumeration, pre-filled forms and cross-checking of existing records.
- The Supreme Court upheld the SIR's validity in May 2026, holding it consistent with the Representation of the People Act.
On Tuesday, June 30, 2026, the Election Commission of India began the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Delhi. The SIR is a nationwide exercise to verify voter records by house-to-house enumeration, pre-filled forms and cross-checking of existing data — a more invasive audit of the rolls than the routine annual revision it replaces.
It has been running in phases since it was announced on October 27, 2025 by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. The five states and the national capital were the next tranche, not the whole exercise.
What the exercise is designed to change
- Remove: names of deceased voters.
- Remove: voters who have permanently moved.
- Remove: duplicate entries.
- Remove: non-citizens.
- Add: eligible citizens currently missing from the rolls.
- Method: house-to-house enumeration, pre-filled forms and cross-checking of existing records.
The direction of travel matters more than the scale for anyone reading the schedule. A revision that only adds names inflates the electorate; one that only removes names shrinks it. The SIR is designed to run in both directions at once, which is why the enumeration phase is the part that determines the eventual net change in any constituency. The Commission has not published a schedule that fixes the order of verification and deletion, and the net effect will only be visible once both phases are complete in a state.
The legality of the exercise is no longer an open question in Indian law. In May 2026 the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the Special Intensive Revision, observing that it was consistent with the provisions of the Representation of the People Act. Political parties had challenged it; that challenge has been decided.
In Karnataka, the state where the exercise has begun under a government four weeks old, the dispute has been about the reference point rather than the method. The Congress has sought the 2002 electoral rolls as the base against which the SIR should be assessed. That argument will not be settled by the enumeration itself; it is a question about which roll is authoritative, and it will be answered in the counting, not in the revision.
Sources — 3 references
These are the published sources this article was established against. NOT SCRIPTED wrote the text above; the sources below are credited to their own publishers.
- The Indian Express (opens in a new tab)
- The Indian Express (opens in a new tab)
- The Indian Express (opens in a new tab)
Sourcing record: NOT SCRIPTED compiled this article from the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision notices and phase schedule as reported by The Indian Express on June 30, 2026, from the Chief Election Commissioner's announcement of the exercise on October 27, 2025, and from the Supreme Court's May 2026 ruling upholding its validity under the Representation of the People Act. Where the reporting quotes the Commission directly, those quotations are the Commission's. No source in this list was used to support a figure that the source itself did not carry.
About the byline
Imran Khan
State politics and administrative reform, with a focus on how policy reaches the district.
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