West Bengal prepares for special intensive revision of electoral rolls ahead of 2026 assembly elections

Kolkata: West Bengal-Chief Electoral Officer’s (WB-CEO’s) office has instructed all the District Magistrates, who are also the DEOs, in Bengal to match the data of 2002 SIR, the last SIR in Bengal, with the latest electoral roll data, following the directive of the the Election Commission of India (ECI), ahead of the forthcoming Special Intensive Revision (SIR) across the country.

The exercise is expected to be completed in seven to ten days, a top official said.

Altogether 79,000 Booth Level Officers, who had been recently appointed in Bengal by EC, will work along with the DEOs and other officials for this work, a top official told ET.


Not only Bengal, all the states across the country will be matching their last SIR data with present 2025 electoral roll data, as per instructions by the ECI. It has been decided in a conference held by ECI in New Delhi last week.

Following the data matching across the country, the data will be uploaded in the website of the ECI for the convenience of the voters, people in the know told ET.

The matched data of the entire country will be available online soon and can then be accessed by the voters, using various kinds of filters, like parent’s name, locality, region, part no etc.

The District Magistrates, who are also District Electoral Officers (DEOs) are conducting the matching of the data across the country, sources said.

It is a step towards easing the process ahead of the SIR exercise, which is likely to start across the country soon.

Meanwhile, a Deputy Election Commissioner (DEC) from ECI will be visiting Kolkata for monitoring Bengal related preparedness. The DEC Gyanesh Bharti is likely to come to Bengal on September 18-19 and oversee the preparations and may visit the field, if needed, a top official said.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is likely to hold a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across the country after carrying out the exercise in poll-bound Bihar. Before implementing SIR in the entire country, ECI has convened a conference of Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) in Delhi on September 10.

It is learnt that ECI has rejected the West Bengal government’s proposal for inclusion of Swasthya Sathi and ration cards in the list of the " indicative" documents in the list of the Commission-proposed list of 11 documents for West Bengal.