Election Commission of India to begin 'intensive' revision of electoral roll

The Election Commission of India (ECI) said on Tuesday that it will undertake a special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in Bihar to weed out ineligible names, citing rapid urbanisation, frequent migration and foreign illegal immigrants as some of the motivations for the house-to-house verification exercise.

- Abhishek Angad

NEW DELHI:

Bihar is set to go to the polls later this year. This is the first time that ECI has spoken about illegal immigrants being part of the electoral roll in the state where the last SIR was done in 2003. The poll body also said that it will conduct a similar exercise nationwide.

"One of the fundamental pre-conditions set out in Article 326 of the Constitution is that a person is required to be an Indian citizen, for their name to be registered in the electoral roll. Consequently, the commission has a constitutional obligation to ensure that only persons who are citizens are enrolled in the electoral roll... Therefore, the commission has now decided to begin the SIR in the entire country for the discharge of its constitutional mandate to protect the integrity of the electoral rolls," deputy election commissioner Sanjay Kumar said in a set of instructions issued to Bihar chief electoral officer.