The Election Commission on Thursday announced that the annual special summary revision (SSR) of electoral rolls, which was not done last year after the SIR began, would resume from Friday.
In its circular, the poll panel also agreed to give "readable PDF" rolls to political parties and candidates.
Since the beginning of his "vote chori" campaign last year, Lok Sabha Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has accused the poll panel of deliberately providing image PDF rolls so that researchers and parties find it difficult to search for demographically similar entries, which could well be bogus voters.
The Congress recently accused the poll panel of shelving the SSR to prevent Gen Z enrolments, although Form 6 has constantly been available for citizens above 18 to register as voters.
Unlike the SIR, the SSR does not prepare the roll afresh but merely checks entries on the existing rolls. Therefore, voters aren't required to "map" themselves to a previous intensive revision — a practice introduced in the current SIR. The SSR is necessary as it offers an up-to-date electoral roll whenever a poll is declared.
Thursday's circular announced the SSR in 17 states and Union Territories that have completed the SIR, as well as Assam, which had a "special revision" — pending an SIR — that can only be conducted after the state completes its long-pending National Register of Citizens updation.
In its circular, the Election Commission said: "Now, in order to facilitate the enrolment of eligible electors with reference to the qualifying date of 1st January, 2027, along with seeking advance applications for the three subsequent qualifying dates of 1st April, 1st July & 1st October, 2027, the Commission hereby directs that the existing electoral rolls shall be revised by conducting a Special Summary Revision...with reference to 01.01.2027 as the qualifying date.... In States/UTs where SIR is going on or has just been completed... the schedule for SSR will be announced later.
"Also, for the 3 States/UTs namely Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, where SIR has not been started so far, schedule for roll revision will be announced in due course of time keeping in view their weather conditions."
Draft rolls will be published on November 12, and claims and objections will begin thereafter and continue until December 12. The final rolls will be published on January 4. In the past, the SSR would begin as early as August.
Bengal will also have an SSR, though no special provisions have been announced for the state's unique category of voters deleted after adjudication in the SIR.
Former chief election commissioner O.P. Rawat told The Telegraph: "Now, it will be up to the election machinery like BLO, ERO to adjudicate whether that person (deleted during the SIR) is eligible or not now.... They may get into the records and see why you were not included during the SIR. If a BLO or an ERO finds that this person was deleted during the SIR because he was not mapped or did not submit any document, then it will be (at) their discretion whether to entertain his application without all those documents.... They will have to give justification for that."
Some tweaks
The circular says: "ERO, immediately after draft and final publication... shall supply free of cost two copies (one hard and one soft in readable PDF format) of each separate polling station of the roll to every recognised political party.
So far, the poll panel has stuck to its manual on electoral rolls that mandates the display of the draft roll in “text mode”, without photos, and in "image PDF format". In Kamal Nath versus the EC in 2018, the Supreme Court upheld this provision and said the poll panel did not need to give a "searchable PDF".
The circular adds: "ERO to generate the addition, deletion and modification supplements and keep them in record for future reference. A copy of the same shall be provided to the recognised political parties."
Earlier, these were not shared with parties in the draft stage.
Other changes include giving parties weekly lists of claims and objections, soft copies of roll on pendrive — a change from the CD or DVDs allowed earlier. Last week, the poll panel placed curbs on the voter name deletion requests filed under Form 7, which Opposition parties had shown to be misused to harass Muslims, allegedly by the BJP.