The Election Commission of India has begun the third phase of its Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, a sweeping door-to-door exercise that will touch roughly 36.73 crore voters across sixteen states and three Union Territories.
Under the drive, more than 3.94 lakh Booth Level Officers are fanning out to verify voter details household by household. The stated aim is to clean the rolls by removing the names of people who have died, permanently moved away, or are registered more than once, while making sure that genuine, eligible citizens are not struck off in the process.
Phase-III covers a large swathe of the country, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Jharkhand, Odisha and several states in the northeast, alongside the Union Territories of Delhi, Chandigarh, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Verification timelines vary by state, running from the late spring through September, with final rolls due to be published between September and December.
The revision has not been free of controversy. Opposition parties in several states have raised concerns that an intensive, document-heavy verification could end up excluding poor and migrant voters who struggle to produce paperwork, and have demanded safeguards to prevent wrongful deletions. The poll body has maintained that the process is designed to protect eligible voters, not to disenfranchise them.
The legal ground was tested and held. In late May, the Supreme Court upheld the legitimacy of the Special Intensive Revision, finding it consistent with the Representation of the People Act and within the Election Commission’s statutory mandate. That ruling cleared the way for the commission to press ahead with the nationwide rollout.
The exercise traces back to a process the commission first announced in late 2025, with an early phase carried out in Bihar ahead of elections there. Officials have described the revision as the most thorough cleaning of the voter list in years, one that they argue is overdue given how much the population has shifted.
For ordinary voters, the practical message is simple: a Booth Level Officer may knock on the door, forms may need to be filled, and details checked. For the political class, the stakes are higher, because the shape of the electoral roll ultimately shapes the electorate that decides the next round of elections.
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