After SIR, a fresh drive: EC orders enrolment of left-out and first-time voters across Tamil Nadu

Chennai: The Election Commission will undertake a special drive across Tamil Nadu to enroll new voters and those left out during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik has said.

The announcement follows a meeting the CEO chaired on Thursday with district election officials, convened after a communication from the Election Commission of India dated September 29, 2026. The ECI has directed that in states and union territories where the SIR has already been completed, a special drive shall be undertaken by the CEO, district election officers and electoral registration officers for the enrolment of left-out and young, first-time eligible electors under the process of continuous updation, Patnaik said in a release.

During the drive, the declaration form attached with Form 6 will be used only for the SIR phase. For the non-SIR period, the forms applicable under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 will apply, she said.

The move comes at a moment of intense political contestation over the electoral rolls. Opposition parties in Tamil Nadu — including the Left parties, the DMK-led INDIA bloc allies and youth groups — have staged protests across the state and in New Delhi this week, alleging that the nationwide voter-verification exercise has struck crores of eligible voters off the rolls. The Election Commission and the government have denied the allegations, insisting the exercise is meant to remove duplicate, deceased and ineligible entries and to keep the rolls accurate.

The Jantar Mantar protest in New Delhi, where Delhi Police denied permission for Friday's anti-CEC demonstration, and the parallel mobilisation by the Cockroach Janata Party in Mumbai underline how central the voter-roll question has become to the opposition's campaign. In that context, the special enrolment drive is likely to be read both as an administrative correction and as a political signal: the rolls, the Commission appears to concede, are not yet complete.

Whether the drive can restore trust will depend on how transparently it is carried out — and on whether the voters who found their names missing discover, this time, that the state is looking for them rather than striking them off.