Published Jun 17, 2026 | 12:22 PM ⚊ Updated Jun 17, 2026 | 12:22 PM
Election Commission of India. (iStock)
Synopsis: Telangana will begin the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls on 25 June, covering anomalies flagged in pre‑SIR mapping. Booth Level Officers will conduct door‑to‑door verification until 24 July, with draft rolls on 31 July and final rolls on 1 October. Concerns persist in Hyderabad, where large voter deletions are feared, prompting political and activist interventions.
Telangana is gearing up for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, scheduled to begin on 25 June, Thursday. The Chief Electoral Officer of Telangana, C Sudarshan Reddy, announced the schedule for SIR after a months-long pre-SIR mapping phase that flagged around 89 lakh anomalies across the state.
This procedure is part of phase III of SIR announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI), covering 16 states and three union territories.
Election officials conducted an awareness meeting with representatives of political parties on 12 June, briefing them on the process, timelines, and implementation of SIR. The preparation phase runs from 15 June to 24 June, followed by a month of door-to-door visits by Booth Level Officers (BLOs) from 25 June to 24 July.
The draft electoral roll will be published on 31 July, with claims and objections open through 30 August. The final electoral roll will be published on 1 October.
The pre-SIR mapping, which linked voters from the 2025 list to those registered in the 2002 SIR, was suspended on 12 June.
The CEO announced that the voters who could not get mapped can do so from 25 June by filling out enumeration forms available with BLOs. No additional documents are needed to complete the forms. However, officials may ask for documentation in case of doubts or anomalies.
Training programs have been conducted for Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), Assembly Level Master Trainers (ALMTs), Election Dy. Tahsildars (EDTs), Election Clerks, and Election Operators. These officers are now training BLO & BLO supervisors.
Also Read: ‘Unprecedented threat to Constitution’: Former civil servants, eminent citizens issue missive on SIR
Meanwhile, anxieties are mounting about the SIR procedure in Telangana, especially in Hyderabad. Close to 40 percent of voters in Hyderabad district and 65 percent in the adjacent Medchal-Malkajgiri district are most likely to get notices from election authorities.
Chief Minister Revanth Reddy conducted a meeting with the Telangana INC cadre and warned them that ‘dangerous’ attempts were being made to delete voters on grounds of suspicion. He directed party workers to set up a state-level war room at Gandhi Bhavan to monitor the SIR mechanism across all assembly and parliamentary constituencies in the state. He instructed them to maintain a close relationship with BLOs.
Hyderabad MP and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has been on the ground during the pre-SIR mapping phase and has raised questions about the anomalies identified by the election officials.
He instructed his party workers to assist people with the verification process. He also urged people to keep relevant documents ready in case of anomalies.
“It is necessary to have your names included, because in Bengal, those people whose names are not in the voter list are being deprived of government schemes,” he added.
Anomalies being checked include name mismatches, age gaps between parents and children of less than 15 years or over 50 years, more than six children to one parent, voters mapped with a single voter in the 2002 SIR list, and age gaps between siblings of less than nine months.
Many of the anomalies are also clerical, like name transliterations and address changes across two decades. The exact process Telangana will adopt for resolving anomalies has not yet been formally announced, adding to the uncertainty.
Owaisi held multiple press conferences last week to raise awareness of the SIR procedure. He expressed disappointment with the way pre-SIR mapping was carried out.
“Some fascist forces in India want to deprive Muslims and Dalits of their right to vote,” he said. He also shared that only one month of revision, that too during monsoon, may not be ideal for a large city like Hyderabad. He submitted a representation to the Chief Electoral Officer, highlighting that pre-printed enumeration forms only contained 2025 electoral roll details, while requiring voters to manually fill in their 2002 data.
He requested that information gathered during the pre-SIR mapping exercise be incorporated into the forms to avoid burdening the citizens.
Activists SQ Masood and MA Mujeeb Ayub have written to the ECI and Telangana CEO to provide enumeration forms in English and Urdu alongside Telugu.
“The objective of the SIR exercise is to ensure an accurate and inclusive electoral roll. This objective can be achieved only when voters are provided forms in languages they can understand,” they said in the letter.
They had earlier urged the CEO to set up help desks as people were facing difficulties with the verification process. District-level help desks have now been set up to assist citizens, details of which have been shared on all social media platforms.
SIR may also impact dual voters or people who are registered both in Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh. This will have a crucial influence on the upcoming municipal elections, as well as the next Telangana state assembly elections.
