The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday asked 18 states and four Union Territories (UTs) to complete background work in preparation for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) soon.
Once the SIR in these places—which it said was "expected to start from April" is completed—all states and UTs will be covered, a PTI report said.
The EC's letter was addressed to the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Ladakh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana and Uttarakhand.
The CEOs have been asked to “complete preparatory work” related to SIR “at the earliest”, EC Secretary Pawan Diwan wrote in his letter.
The poll authority also noted that the pan-Indian SIR process for voter lists had been ordered on June 24 last year.
This comes after the SIR exercise was completed in Bihar, while poll-bound Assam saw a 'special revision'—instead of SIR—completed on February 10, due to legal hurdles posed by an incomplete National Register of Citizens (NRC) process. Meanwhile, it is currently ongoing in nine states and three UTs.
It was after the Bihar exercise ended that the EC announced SIR exercises in 12 states and UTs—Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The SIRs in the nine states and three UTs also coincides with the first phase of Census 2027—the Houselisting and Housing Census—that will take place between April and September this year. EC officials said they were confident that both exercises could overlap without issues.