Published Jun 30, 2026 | 11:15 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 30, 2026 | 11:22 AM
The SIR exercise has seen over 5 crore voters being removed from the rolls till now. (File)
Synopsis: With SIR set to cover 19 states and union territories in the latest phase, INDIA bloc members have sent a letter to the Chief Justice of India stating their concern over the manner in which SIR has been conducted.
The INDIA bloc has sent a joint letter signed by 23 political parties and one independent member to the Chief Justice of India highlighting concerns about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
The decision to send the letter had been taken in the INDIA bloc meeting on June 8, 2026, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh stated in a post on X. He said the letter also touched upon “issues related to elections”.
“The Opposition parties remain firmly committed to SURE – Solidarity, Unity, and REsistance,” he said in a post on X in Hindi.
Phase 1 of the SIR exercise was conducted in Bihar, where 65 lakh voters were removed from the list. This represented 5-6% of the entire electorate there.
SIR has gone on to cover 12 more states and union territories: Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep.
Around 5.18 crore voters were dropped from the earlier list of almost 51 crore in these states.
There were 66.88 lakh deceased, 63.16 lakh faced objections/adjudications, while around 3.88 crore were purged for duplicate entries, having permanently shifted and other reasons, according to the Election Commission.
Nineteen other states are set to be covered in the third phase. These include the states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, and Uttarakhand and the Union Territories of Delhi (NCT), Chandigarh, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
The Supreme Court had on May 27 upheld the exercise, noting that “SIR was not a process to subvert but to secure the mandate of free and fair elections.”
A two-judge bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi also held that the process unanimously upheld the “integrity, accuracy and credibility” of electoral rolls. It observed that SIR “breathes life into the constitutional mandate under Article 324 within the precise statutory contours provided by Section 21(3).”
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(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
