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Tirunelveli District Collector R. Sukumar held a meeting with the representatives of recognised political parties on Wednesday on the Special Intensive Revision of electoral roll to be taken-up in the district shortly. Chairing the meeting, Dr. Sukumar said the Election Commission of India had proposed to conduct the SIR of voters’ list with January 1, 2026 as the qualifying date for revising the electoral roll by adding the new eligible voters while deleting the names of dead or transferred voters from the voters’ list. After completing the training of the personnel to be involved in SIR before November 3, the door-to-door check would be held between November 4 and December 4 so as to prepare the draft electoral roll based on SIR by December 8 and release the same on December 9. Meanwhile, the delimitation and sorting of the polling booths would be completed before December 4. Objections or appeals from the aggrieved voters based on the draft electoral roll would be received between December 9 and January 8 and verification of these claims would be completed by January 31 so as to release the final electoral roll for the upcoming Assembly election on February 7. “The enumerators had been told to complete this exercise in impartial manner and to ensure the enrolling of every eligible voter in the electoral roll. If a voter is not satisfied with the Electors Registration Officer’s explanation for rejecting his or her claim, the aggrieved voter can file the first appeal with the District Collector and the second appeal with the Chief Electoral Officer,” Dr. Sukumar said. As per the last SIR of electoral roll held in 2002, the district’s rural Assembly segments of Ambasamudram, Nanguneri, Radhapuram and then Cheranmahadevi had 6,92,739 voters including 3,36,029 men and 3,56,710 women voters. In Tirunelveli and Palayamkottai, both urban Assembly constituencies, had 4,38,051 voters including 2,15,701 men, 2,22,350 women voters in 2005. The district now has 14,18,325 voters including 6,91,026 men, 7,27,130 women and 169 other voters. The Polling Station Block-level Officer, who would visit each house would distribute two copies of the application and facilitate the filling-up of the applications. If the house remains locked, the officer would drop two copies of the application and come again at least thrice to collect the copy of the filled-in application. While the electors need not submit any document along with their filled-in applications, eligible voters, whose names had not been found in the electoral roll, would have to submit any one of the documents notified by the Election Commission of India. “The district now has 1,680 polling booths as each booth will have the maximum of 1,200 voters,” Dr. Sukumar said. District Revenue Officer M. Suganya, Sub-Collector, Cheranmahadevi, Ayush Gupta, and others participated in the meeting.
