EC announces Special Summary Revision (SSR), not SIR, of electoral rolls in 17 states and UTs; final lists due January 4, 2027
New Delhi: The Election Commission on Thursday announced the schedule for the Special Summary Revision (SSR) — an annual exercise it skipped in 2026 — for 17 states and Union Territories, including the five states where Assembly polls are due in early 2027. The Commission clarified that this is the regular summary update of existing rolls, not the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
The revision will be conducted under Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, with January 1, 2027, as the qualifying date. Final electoral rolls will be published on January 4, 2027. The five poll-bound states covered are Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa. Their Assembly terms end between March and May 2027, allowing the Commission to hold elections earlier under the law.
The complete list of states and UTs includes Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. In most of these, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has already been completed. Assam is included even though it did not undergo SIR.
According to the schedule, rationalisation and rearrangement of polling stations will be completed by November 2. Integrated draft electoral rolls will be published on November 12. Claims and objections can be filed from November 12 to December 11 and must be disposed of by December 28. The exercise will also accept advance applications for subsequent qualifying dates of April 1, July 1 and October 1, 2027, to enrol prospective electors who turn 18 on those dates.
Unlike the SIR, which prepares electoral rolls de novo through intensive enumeration and house-to-house verification by Booth Level Officers, the SSR is only an update of the existing rolls. It focuses on enrolling eligible citizens, particularly young and first-time voters, correcting entries, and removing names of deceased, shifted or duplicate electors, without fresh door-to-door BLO visits.
The Commission said the SSR schedule for other states and UTs where the SIR is ongoing or has just concluded — including Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi and Telangana among others — will be announced later. Schedules for Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, where SIR has not yet begun, will also be notified later, taking weather conditions into account.
In a related decision, the EC has directed that recognised political parties be provided soft copies of draft and final rolls in readable PDF format (without photographs), instead of the earlier image-based PDFs. This addresses a long-standing demand from opposition parties for machine-readable rolls that can be more easily scrutinised.
The resumption of the annual SSR, paused after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections amid the phased SIR exercise that began in 2025, comes against the backdrop of debates over voter deletions, enrolment of Gen Z electors and the purity of electoral rolls. The exercise aims to ensure updated lists are ready well ahead of the early 2027 Assembly elections in the five states.
