The Election Commission of India (ECI) launched the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process at the national level starting from June 2025. This process first gained massive controversy during the Bihar Assembly elections (where NDA won a landslideand has now become a nationwide flashpoint due to the rising deaths of Booth Level Officers (BLOs).
SNPNEWS.IN Report (Gurmail Kamboj) – 2 December 2025, The Election Commission of India began the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in June 2025, initially in Bihar ahead of the assembly elections, with the stated objective of cleansing voter lists before polls. The exercise was conducted under Article 324 and the Representation of the People Act, 1950, to remove dead, duplicate, and ineligible voters (including alleged foreigners).
In Bihar (23 June to 30 September 2025), BLOs, with the help of a large number of volunteers, went house-to-house for verification. As a result, the total number of voters dropped from 7.89 crore to 7.42 crore — a net deletion of nearly 47 lakh names. The NDA called it a necessary cleanup; opposition parties accused it of systematically disenfranchising poor, backward, and minority voters and demanded the election results be cancelled.
After the Bihar polls, the ECI rolled out SIR 2.0 in 12 states and Union Territories from November 2025 to further “purify” voter lists. Under this phase, BLOs have to go door-to-door, distribute forms, upload data, and meet strict deadlines.
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According to reports, BLOs (mostly school teachers and anganwadi workers) are being forced to work without adequate support (no data entry operators, no assistants). Many cannot even read the forms in Bengali or other regional languages, leading to errors and allegations of mass deletions.
Since the current phase began on 1 November 2025, 25 to 40 BLOs have reportedly died — through suicide, heart attacks, and strokes — due to extreme work pressure. Each BLO has been assigned a target of 1,000 voters, without attendants or proper technical help. Language barriers and threats over voter deletions have added to the mental stress.
Opposition parties (Congress, TMC, AAP, etc.) have called the process unnecessary and murderous, holding the central government and the Election Commission directly responsible for the suicides and heart attacks. They have demanded an immediate halt to SIR and a discussion in the ongoing winter session of Parliament.
Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing in the Supreme Court, questioned why SIR is being used like a citizenship verification drive (similar to NRC). He argued that creating a completely new voter list after 1950 is practically impossible and that the suicides of over 30 BLOs cannot be ignored. He suggested that voter lists should be made available in machine-readable format for transparency.
Today (2 December 2025), a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant heard multiple PILs challenging SIR from states including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. The court observed:
● Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship.
● Foreigners cannot be allowed to vote.
● In a country where millions lack documents, how can everyone be expected to produce them?
The court posted the next round of hearings between 4 and 9 December 2025.
The Election Commission has dismissed the death reports as “false and politically motivated”, insisting that SIR is essential for clean voter lists. It claims incentives have been increased (₹2,000 per BLO) and accused the opposition of spreading fear. However, in Tamil Nadu alone, 96% forms have been distributed and 69% digitized so far.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has also received complaints highlighting “inhuman pressure” on BLOs.
The continuing deaths of BLOs and allegations of large-scale disenfranchisement have put the Election Commission under unprecedented scrutiny and turned SIR into one of the biggest electoral controversies in recent times.