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Chennai: DMK representatives who attended the all-party meeting on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, convened by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday wanted the exercise to be postponed and carried in a more democratic way, and not in a hurry, by issuing a fresh notification on it after withdrawing the notification dated October 27.Alleging that there were wrong an obscure guidelines for conducting SIR, the DMK, in a representation by its organization secretary R S Bharati, to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Archana Patnaik, said Aadhaar card should be accepted as the bona fide proof of residence and raised five question to the ECI as the guidelines issued were ambiguous about them. The CEO said January 1, 2026, would be the qualifying date for SIR in the State and the pre-revision phase would be between October 28 and November 3. From November 4 to December 4 booth level officers would be conducting house-to-house visits and distribute pre-filled enumeration forms to existing voters and collect the filled forms to identify absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters. During the pre-revision period, the election department would also rationalize polling booths to ensure that no booth had more than 1200 voters for ease of access by the public, the CEO said. In the meeting with political parties, the CEO explained about the SIR and the role of Booth level agents (BLAs) in assisting voters. The BLAs will also be assisting the ECI in the enumeration process. While the DMK and its allies opposed SIR, the AIADMK and other parties supported the move. A total of 12 parties attended the meeting held at the Secretariat. They were the Aam Aadmi party, Bahujan Samaj party, BJP, CPM, Congress, National People’s Party, AIADMK, DMK, DMDK, CPI, Naam Tamilar Katchi and VCK. The other questions raised by harati are: when will the voter be called for producing the documents, under what provision of law/rule will the ERO issue notice to the voter to produce the document, What will be the time frame to produce the document, what will be the form of the notice and who will serve the notice, through which medium. Listing out the practical difficulties for the people participating in the enumeration of SIR, he said the enumeration had been fixed between November 4 to December 4, which was the peak period for Northeast Monsoon in Tamil Nadu which was expecting heavy rains and inclement weather. Since the voters, most of them agriculturists, would find no time to receive, fill, and return the enumeration forms, there was a reasonable apprehension that in this process, deletion of a large number of voters will occur. The revenue department would also be handling situations arising out of heavy rains/floods and it would impair a purposeful purification of the voter list, he said. He also cited the Christmas holidays and the Pongal festival as reasons for not holding SIR now and wondered if the electoral roll of Bihar had anything to do with the SIR in Tamil Nadu.He asked: ’Will the Bihar SIR be taken as a basic document to include voters of Bihar as voters of Tamil Nadu without there being any eligibility based on the criteria of 'ordinary residence'? The apprehension of political parties that ineligible voters in large numbers could be added in this process was fortified by Annexure – III and it needed to be addressed by the ECI through necessary amendments to the October 27 notification, he said..
