EC denies dissent amid growing SIR electoral roll row (Img: Dynamite News)
New Delhi: Amid growing questions over dissent within the Election Commission and its handling of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, sources in the Election Commission sources said that no Election Commissioner had dissented on any decision since February 19, 2025.
The assertion comes a week after a news paper reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections on 14 occasions over 10 months regarding decisions including orders linked to the SIR exercise.
According to the report, the objections concerned several aspects of the exercise, including the centralisation of the ECINet electoral roll database platform, changes to Form 6 and decisions relating to the deletion of names from electoral rolls.
The issue has attracted further attention after INDIA bloc parties met to discuss the SIR exercise and raised questions about the functioning of the Election Commission.
Poll panel sources, however, maintain that SIR is a statutory and established process for revising electoral rolls. They said all decisions taken by the three-member commission since February 19, 2025, had been unanimous.
According to the Election Commission, the primary objective of SIR is to identify dead, duplicate, fake and shifted voters while ensuring that all eligible voters remain on the electoral rolls.
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Responding to questions surrounding Form 6, which is used by new voters and those seeking to add their names to electoral rolls, EC sources said there had been no change to the form.
On the legal scrutiny of SIR, commission sources referred to proceedings before the Supreme Court, saying the court had not suspended the exercise.
The sources said the court had allowed SIR to continue, including the voter declaration and mapping process, while putting safeguards in place for voters.
The Election Commission has described SIR as a comprehensive process that has been followed for years. It said documents were being sought only from voters born after 1987, while software was also being used to identify mapping errors and prevent fake or duplicate names from remaining on the rolls.
The commission has also stressed that the process of adding and deleting names is decentralised and handled by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), rather than personally by the Chief Election Commissioner.
According to sources, none of the nearly 25,000 EROs and AEROs involved in the process had complained about it.
Sources also said some concerns surrounding SIR related to individual cases. They added that Booth Level Officers had been trained to visit voters' homes at least three times for verification, including when voters were unavailable or had shifted.
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On questions concerning 97 Goa voters who were initially left out of the final electoral rolls, sources said the names could not be included because of a technical glitch.
Of these, 88 names have since been added, while three people were found to be Portuguese citizens and six were abroad at the time. Verification of the remaining cases is underway.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also raised the issue of 727 voters allegedly being removed from the electoral rolls at Bela Estate. According to EC sources, the process of adding new names is still underway in Delhi.
Sources said that when Booth Level Officers visited Bela Estate, no one was present, raising questions over whom the officials could have approached for signatures or verification.
According to EC sources, anyone who has signed and submitted the SIR form to a BLO will have their name confirmed in the draft electoral roll.
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On the demand to re-include around 11 crore voters in the electoral rolls, commission sources said this would effectively mean restoring names removed during the verification process but whose re-verification has not yet been completed.
