Maharashtra SEC asks EC to delay special intensive roll revision till Jan 2026

The Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) has asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to postpone any plans for conducting a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in the state until January 2026, citing the extensive schedule of upcoming local body elections.

In a letter dated September 9, the SEC said that the same officials responsible for carrying out the SIR exercise would also be engaged in conducting polls for various urban and rural local bodies.

“The Honourable Supreme Court, through its order dated 6 May 2025, has directed the State Election Commission to make an endeavour to complete the local body elections in Maharashtra within four months, while allowing the Commission to seek an extension of time in appropriate cases,” the letter stated.

A senior official said that elections are due for all 29 municipal corporations, 247 municipal councils, 42 out of 147 nagar panchayats, 32 of the 34 zilla parishads, and 336 out of 351 panchayat samitis across the state. Given the scale of the exercise, the SEC noted that deputy collectors and tahsildars, who also serve as Returning Officers and Assistant Returning Officers, will remain occupied with the election process until early 2026.

“As the field staff, including deputy collectors and tahsildars, are common to both the local body elections and the electoral roll revision, it is requested that any proposed Special Intensive Revision programme be deferred until the end of January 2026,” the SEC said.

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This was the second time the SEC formally conveyed its inability to participate in the SIR before January 2026. Earlier, in the first week of September, the Commission had informed the ECI of its position when the latter was preparing to hold a conference of Chief Electoral Officers from various states.

The SEC further informed that while the delimitation of wards for zilla parishads and panchayat samitis has been completed, the process for municipal corporations, councils, and nagar panchayats is nearing completion. Once ward boundaries are finalised, officials will need to bifurcate the legislative assembly electoral rolls accordingly before elections can be held.

A Special Intensive Revision involves the complete re-preparation of electoral rolls through door-to-door enumeration. Enumerators record eligible voters as of a specified qualifying date, disregarding previous rolls. The process is generally undertaken when existing rolls are outdated or following administrative changes such as delimitation.

A similar exercise was undertaken in Bihar in June 2025 ahead of the assembly elections, where voters were required to present one of 11 documents to prove eligibility. The move, however, faced criticism and legal challenges from opposition parties, who alleged that it disenfranchised several registered voters.

In July 2025, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had endorsed the idea of conducting a Special Intensive Revision in the state, praising the Election Commission’s exercise in Bihar and noting that such a revision would help ensure cleaner and more accurate voter lists. He had also recalled moving the High Court in 2012 to demand an intensive revision of electoral rolls.

With agency inputs