Election Commission Asks All States To Prepare For Nationwide Voter Roll Revision With 1 January 2026 As Qualifying Date: Report

A day after the Supreme Court petition challenged the Election Commission’s (EC) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, the poll panel reportedly directed all other states to prepare for a similar revision with 1 January 2026 as the qualifying date, reported The Indian Express.

This nationwide drive aims to include everyone who turns 18 by that date.

Bihar electoral survey is using 2003 electoral rolls as “probative evidence of eligibility,” which means that voters on the electoral roll that year, when the last intensive revision was done, will be presumed Indian citizens unless proven otherwise

Other states are also likely to use the year of their last intensive roll revision as the cut-off for presumption of citizenship for existing voters, the report said.

The EC’s 5 July letter told Chief Electoral Officers to complete “pre-revision activities.”

These include rationalising polling stations (including identification of new buildings to ensure no polling station has more than 1,200 electors), filling vacant posts like Block Level Officers (BLOs) and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), and supervisors who will undertake the enumeration on the ground; and conducting their training.

This move comes ahead of Assembly elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry.

The Supreme Court, which declined to restrain the EC's electoral revision in Bihar, flagged the risk of disenfranchising voters just before polling.

Justice Joymalya Bagchi warned of disenfranchising voters by removing names from the rolls just months before polling, even if the broader objective of cleansing the rolls is legitimate.

Under the EC’s 24 June order, any person not listed in the 2003 electoral rolls in Bihar — an estimated 2.93 crore individuals — must submit at least one of these documents to prove their eligibility (essentially, age and Indian citizenship) to be included in the final roll.

The EC says large-scale roll changes, urbanisation, and migration demand this verification.

Officials also cite complaints about duplicate entries and manipulation.

Unlike past revisions, this SIR places the burden of citizenship proof on enrolled voters and ignores the existing roll’s “sanctity.”

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