Shifting timelines, Form 7 surge put SIR Phase-2 under strain

New Delhi: The modified SIR phase-2, packaged as more voter-friendly, seems to be progressing no better than SIR phase-1 with lakhs awaiting a hearing, state governments pitched against the Election Commission, court battles and timelines dragging beyond schedule.

SIR 2.0 has brought in multiple new elements into the electoral roll revision process:

REPEATED EXTENSIONS


Originally, SIR phase-2, which began across a dozen states/UTs on October 27, 2025, was to wrap up publication of draft rolls on December 9, 2025, and publish the final rolls on February 7, 2026, timelines which were revised multiple times. ECI has allowed several extensions under SIR 2.0 -- in some cases after Chief Electoral Officers (CEO)s have thrown up their hands and in others, after the Supreme Court intervened.

The latest is poll-bound West Bengal. With lakhs served notices due to "logical discrepancies" and several awaiting a "hearing" to prove their eligibility credentials, the Bengal CEO wrote to ECI seeking a week's extension which he did not get. It was on February 10, following a SC direction, that hearing was extended to February 14, thereby pushing up the date of publication of final electoral rolls. This is the third extension given to Bengal.

On February 11, ECI announced an extension for Goa which will now publish its final rolls on February 21, on request from the CEO. Last week, ECI gave yet another extension for similar "hearings" in Uttar Pradesh (fourth extension) after the CEO's request. Similarly, poll-bound Kerala which moved the SC over tight SIR deadlines was given an extension by ECI following a nudge from the SC, a move that was then replicated across five of the SIR phase-2 states from Tamil Nadu to Gujarat.

DISCREPANCY

SIR 2.0 is different from SIR 1.0 of Bihar in terms of process, given the lessons and learnings. In SIR 2.0, the preliminary phase of enumeration only involved electors submitting their pre-printed enumeration form (EF) without documents of proof. With electors left scrambling for documents in Bihar, ECI clarified that for SIR 2.0, documents will only be from electors who cannot be "mapped" with the intensive revision (IR) rolls of 2002-2004. But, the booth level officer (BLO) was burdened with another task -- mapping each elector with the previous IR against a tight deadline. It is the latter stage involving "unmapped" electors, the "claims and objections" that arose and notices issued to lakhs of electors that emerged as bigger stress points for electors besides a major political flash point. The "logical discrepancy" element has added another dimension with the ECI, probably for the first time, getting into specifics of age gap between parent and child, number of progeny and siblings and so on.

FORM 7 applications

There is also the curious case of a big surge in Form 7 applications across several states ahead of the final roll publication, posing a serious challenge for CEOs. ET has learnt that several CEOs and election staff have informally raised concerns. Form 7 allows a voter to object to the inclusion of any name in the constituency's rolls over ineligibility or absence/ shifting/death.

CEOs of several SIR 2.0 states are now faced with 'bulk' Form 7 applications even as 'misuse' and 'fake' applications have been alleged by several political parties from the Indian National Congress to Trinamool and Samajwadi Party.

Top ECI officials involved in similar exercises in the past told ET that while very few Form 7 applications are usually filed, all this data has been put out in the public domain for transparency.

Bottomline

Lack of data transparency and the changing format of SIR, playing out amid a staggering number of deletions, continue to allow space for both mistrust in what should have been a clean-cut administrative process and ensuing predictable politics around it.