SIR Deadlines Pushed Again: Delhi, Punjab, Telangana, Karnataka Get More Time for Voter Roll Revision

The Election Commission on Wednesday extended the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) schedule for Delhi, Punjab, Telangana and Karnataka , marking the second such extension this week after Haryana and Andhra Pradesh received similar relief on Tuesday.

In Delhi , the house-to-house enumeration drive, which began on June 30, will now run till August 8 instead of July 29. The draft electoral roll, originally due on August 5, will be published on August 17, with claims and objections open till September 16. The final roll, earlier slated for October 7, will now appear on October 19 , a 12-day delay that the Election Commission has attributed to the sheer scale of the exercise.

Punjab gets 11 extra days. BLO visits, which started on June 25, will now continue till August 3, pushing the draft roll to August 13 and the final list to October 12, two days later than planned. Telangana follows the same enumeration deadline of August 3, with its draft rolls due on August 10 and final rolls also on October 12. Karnataka mirrors Delhi's timeline, with enumeration till August 8, draft rolls on August 17, and final publication on October 19.

Alongside the revised schedule, the Commission has sanctioned a one-time honorarium of ₹6,000 for every Booth Level Officer and BLO Supervisor engaged in the drive, over and above their annual remuneration, an acknowledgement, the ECI said, of the extensive door-to-door verification being carried out across crores of households.

Delhi and the three states are part of Phase 3 of the SIR , rolled out on May 14. According to the Election Commission, the exercise will eventually cover 16 states and three Union Territories , engaging over 3.94 lakh Booth Level Officers to verify more than 36.73 crore electors nationwide. Once this phase concludes, every part of the country except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh will have undergone the revision.

This is not the first schedule change. The earlier phase, which included Bihar , also saw multiple deadline extensions, with around 47 lakh names removed from the state's electoral rolls after verification. After surviving a Supreme Court challenge in May, the repeated extensions indicate the Commission is prioritising accuracy over speed as it works toward the October deadlines.