An administrative process is judged less by what it intends than by what it costs the person on the receiving end. Being asked to appear at a government office on a working day, with documents, is a small thing for some people and an impossible thing for others — and that asymmetry is what the Election Commission addressed this week.
At a meeting on 26 September 2026, the Commission took a set of decisions on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The central one: where a notice has been issued to a person for being unmapped or for logical discrepancies, Booth Level Officers will visit their homes to collect documents and upload them to ECINet for the Electoral Registration Officer to decide. Such persons need not be called to the ERO or AERO office. Hearings will be held only in exceptional circumstances as the ERO decides, and then preferably online — with any adult family member able to attend on the elector's behalf.
What SIR is, and under what power
The Special Intensive Revision is an exercise to verify and rebuild electoral rolls through house-to-house enumeration, pre-filled forms and verification against earlier voter data. Its stated purpose is twofold and the two halves pull in opposite directions: removing the names of the deceased, the permanently shifted, duplicates and non-citizens, while ensuring eligible citizens are not left out.
It is conducted under Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which empowers the Commission to direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of it, for reasons to be recorded. That is the specific statutory hook, and it is distinct from the annual summary revision that happens as a matter of routine.
The nationwide exercise was announced on 27 October 2025 by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, covering all 28 States and 8 Union Territories in three phases, timed to conclude before the 2026 Assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry. Phase III covers 16 States and 3 Union Territories. Across the first two phases, nearly 59 crore electors were covered, with over 6.3 lakh Booth Level Officers and about 9.2 lakh Booth Level Agents involved.
Those numbers are the context for this week's decisions. An exercise touching that many people generates a very large number of individual cases, and any procedural requirement imposed on each of them multiplies accordingly.
The chain of officers, and who actually decides
This hierarchy is the single most asked thing about electoral rolls, and the decisions announced this week only make sense against it.
- The Booth Level Officer (BLO) is the field-level official attached to a polling station, usually a local government employee — a teacher, an anganwadi worker, a patwari. The BLO does the house-to-house work: enumeration, distributing and collecting forms, verifying residence.
- The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) is the statutory deciding authority for a constituency's roll. Inclusions, deletions and corrections are the ERO's decision, not the BLO's. Assistant EROs (AEROs) assist.
- The District Election Officer (DEO) coordinates the district.
- The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) heads the machinery in a State or Union Territory.
- The Election Commission of India supervises the whole apparatus under Article 324.
- Booth Level Agents (BLAs) are appointed by political parties, not by the Commission. They are the parties' mechanism for scrutinising the roll as it is built — which is how contestation is built into the process rather than left to litigation afterwards.
We set this machinery out in full in our explainer on who actually builds the electoral roll. The distinction that carries most marks is simple: the BLO collects, the ERO decides.
Why home visits rather than hearings
The change announced this week shifts the burden of movement from the citizen to the official, and the reasoning is worth spelling out because it is a general principle of administrative design.
A requirement to appear in person at an office imposes costs that fall unevenly. A person with formal employment, transport and documents at hand can comply. A daily-wage worker loses a day's earnings. Someone elderly or disabled may be unable to travel. Someone who has migrated for work cannot appear at all. The formal rule is identical for everyone; its effect is not, and the people most likely to fail the requirement are the least likely to be able to contest the consequence.
In an electoral roll that consequence is the loss of the franchise. Deletion from the roll is not a fine or a delay — it removes the ability to vote in the next election, and it is not remedied by later goodwill.
Three of this week's decisions address that directly. Home collection of documents removes the journey. Authorising any adult family member to attend a hearing removes the need for the elector personally to be available. And online hearings, with facilities to be strengthened, remove the journey even where a hearing is unavoidable.
The fourth addresses the hardest category. District Election Officers are to create help desks and hold special camps for people living in night shelters, for labourers, the poor and the homeless. These are people with no fixed address to be enumerated at, and an exercise built on house-to-house verification reaches them worst. A residence-based roll and a population without stable residence are structurally in tension, and camps are the available answer.
ECINet, and the review of it
The Commission also addressed its own technology. Field officers have role-based access to ECINet as per their statutory powers, and a Committee headed by a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner, including an independent expert from an IIT or IIIT, will review ECINet to verify that it complies with the provisions of the Acts and Rules, and report back. In future, new IT modules and portals will be discussed in the Committee of Officers before Commission approval.
This is more significant than an IT audit, and the reason is a genuine issue in digital governance.
When a statutory process is delivered through software, the software's design becomes a source of law in practice. If a form will not accept an entry the Rules permit, or a workflow will not allow an officer to exercise a discretion the statute confers, the system has narrowed the law without any amendment to it. The phrase "role-based access as per their statutory powers" is the Commission asserting the correct relationship: the software must implement the statute, not redefine it. A committee with an independent technical expert is the appropriate way to check that, because the question is simultaneously legal and architectural and neither a lawyer nor an engineer can answer it alone.
The forms, the Court, and the extended deadlines
On the forms, the Commission recorded that the declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Supreme Court, and that for the non-SIR period the forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 will apply.
The forms themselves are examinable and worth holding: Form 6 for inclusion of a new elector, Form 6A for an overseas elector, Form 7 for objection to inclusion or for deletion, and Form 8 for correction of particulars, transposition within a constituency or replacement of an EPIC.
On the calendar, two States received extensions on their own requests:
- Delhi — claims and objections until 30 October 2026; disposal of notices, claims and objections until 30 November 2026
- Maharashtra — claims and objections until 12 October 2026; disposal until 10 November 2026
Extensions of this kind are routine in roll revision and are usually a signal that the volume of cases exceeds what the original window allowed.
Two housekeeping decisions close the list, and they are not trivial: agendas will be circulated in advance and minutes issued for all Commission meetings, and annual performance appraisal reports of all officers will be completed by 31 December each year. A body exercising the powers the Commission holds under Article 324 is strengthened rather than weakened by recording how it decides.
🔑 Revision block
- The meeting: Election Commission of India, 26 September 2026
- Core decision: where a notice has been issued during SIR for being unmapped or for logical discrepancies, BLOs will visit homes to collect documents and upload to ECINet for the ERO to decide; such persons need not attend the ERO or AERO office
- Hearings: only in exceptional circumstances as the ERO decides, and then preferably online; any adult family member may be authorised to attend
- For the homeless and poor: DEOs to create help desks and hold special camps for people in night shelters, labourers, the poor and the homeless
- SIR: verification and rebuilding of electoral rolls through house-to-house enumeration, pre-filled forms and verification of earlier data — removing deceased, shifted, duplicate and non-citizen entries while not excluding eligible citizens
- Statutory power: Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950
- Announced: 27 October 2025 by CEC Gyanesh Kumar; all 28 States and 8 UTs in three phases; Phase III covers 16 States and 3 UTs
- Scale so far: nearly 59 crore electors across the first two phases; over 6.3 lakh BLOs and about 9.2 lakh BLAs
- The officer chain: BLO collects → ERO decides (assisted by AEROs) → DEO coordinates the district → CEO heads the State or UT → ECI supervises under Article 324
- BLAs: appointed by political parties, not by the Commission
- ECINet review: Committee headed by a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner with an independent expert from an IIT or IIIT, to verify compliance with the Acts and Rules; new IT modules to go through the Committee of Officers before approval
- Forms: Form 6 new inclusion, Form 6A overseas elector, Form 7 objection or deletion, Form 8 correction, transposition or EPIC replacement; the declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR upheld by the Supreme Court
- Non-SIR period: forms under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 apply
- Deadline extensions: Delhi — claims and objections to 30 October 2026, disposal to 30 November 2026; Maharashtra — claims and objections to 12 October 2026, disposal to 10 November 2026
- Also decided: agendas circulated in advance and minutes issued for all Commission meetings; APARs completed by 31 December each year
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls is conducted under: (a) Article 324 of the Constitution (b) Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (c) Section 62 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (d) The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960
→ (b) — Article 324 vests superintendence of elections in the Commission generally.
Q2. Under the decisions of 26 September 2026, a person issued a notice during SIR will: (a) Have documents collected at home by the Booth Level Officer (b) Be required to appear before the ERO in person (c) Be removed from the roll automatically (d) Be required to obtain a court order
→ (a) — with hearings only in exceptional cases, preferably online.
Q3. The statutory authority that decides on inclusion in or deletion from an electoral roll is the: (a) Booth Level Officer (b) District Election Officer (c) Electoral Registration Officer (d) Chief Electoral Officer
→ (c) — the BLO collects; the ERO decides.
Q4. Booth Level Agents are appointed by: (a) The Election Commission (b) Political parties (c) District Election Officers (d) State governments
→ (b) — which is how party scrutiny is built into roll preparation.
Q5. Form 6 under the electoral registration framework is used for: (a) Objection to an inclusion (b) Correction of particulars (c) Registration of an overseas elector (d) Inclusion of a new elector
→ (d) — Form 7 is for objection or deletion, Form 8 for correction.
Q6. The superintendence, direction and control of elections is vested in the Election Commission by: (a) Article 324 (b) Article 326 (c) Article 329 (d) Article 243K
→ (a) — Article 326 provides for adult suffrage; Article 243K concerns State Election Commissions.
Q7. The requirement to appear in person at a government office imposes unequal costs principally because: (a) Offices are located only in State capitals (b) The rule applies differently to different categories of elector (c) Travel, lost wages and mobility constraints fall unevenly across electors (d) Documents are not accepted in person
→ (c) — which is the reasoning behind shifting to home collection.
Q8. The committee constituted to review ECINet is to include: (a) A retired judge of the Supreme Court (b) An independent expert from an IIT or IIIT (c) Representatives of recognised political parties (d) The Comptroller and Auditor General
→ (b) — headed by a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner.
Q9. Requiring software to reflect officers' statutory powers matters because: (a) Software design can otherwise narrow or alter what the law permits in practice (b) The Rules require all portals to be open source (c) Digital records are not legally admissible (d) Officers cannot exercise discretion under any circumstances
→ (a)
Q10. Consider the following statements: 1. SIR is the same exercise as the annual summary revision of electoral rolls. 2. An exercise built on house-to-house verification reaches homeless electors least well, which is why special camps were directed. Which is/are correct? (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) Both 1 and 2 (d) Neither 1 nor 2
→ (b) — SIR is a special revision under Section 21(3), distinct from the routine annual revision.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
The Election Commission and electoral rolls form one of the most reliably examined areas of the CDS and OTA polity section, and the questions are mostly institutional.
The officer-hierarchy question is the commonest, and the discriminating detail is always who decides. BLO, ERO, AERO, DEO, CEO — five designations, and the ERO is the statutory deciding authority. A question that asks who may delete a name from the roll is testing exactly this.
The article question pairs 324 (superintendence, direction and control of elections vested in the Commission), 325 (no exclusion from the roll on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex), 326 (adult suffrage) and 329 (bar on court interference in electoral matters). Learning them as a block is far more efficient than one at a time, and 243K and 243ZA for State Election Commissions belong alongside as the distractors.
The Act question separates the RP Act, 1950 — which deals with the electoral rolls, delimitation and qualification of constituencies — from the RP Act, 1951, which deals with the conduct of elections, disqualifications and corrupt practices. Rolls in 1950; conduct in 1951. This is the single most useful distinction on the topic.
The form question asks which form does what. Six, 6A, 7 and 8.
For the descriptive paper, the strongest frame is the tension inside SIR's own objective: removing ineligible names and retaining eligible ones are both legitimate, and tightening verification to achieve the first inevitably risks the second. The decisions of this week are best read as an attempt to reduce the second risk without abandoning the first — and an answer that identifies that trade-off, rather than describing the process, is engaging with what the Commission is actually trying to do.
Preparing for CDS or OTA? Election-related questions are won on two distinctions — who decides, and which of the two RP Acts applies. Build the base with our CDS/OTA polity notes, follow the daily CDS/OTA current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Aditya Tiwari — Economy & polity faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.