Amid SIR row, UP launches voter enrolment drive for missing, first-time voters

The campaign will primarily target new and first-time voters, while also seeking to verify the status of those who appeared on the pre-SIR electoral rolls but were missing from the final list published in April this year.

No eligible voter will be left out: CEO

Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa announced the initiative in a post on X on Monday (October 12). He said the campaign would cover all 75 districts and involve 177,516 polling booths across the state.

“As per instructions of ECI, 75 District Election Officers of the state of Uttar Pradesh have started a proactive campaign to ensure that no eligible elector is left off the electoral rolls,” Rinwa said in the post.

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“If any person has any complaint, please feel free to inform any of the 177516 BLOs, 2042 AEROs, 403 EROs of 75 DEOs. We are committed to ensuring that ‘no’ eligible voter is excluded from the voter list,” the post added.

Emphasis on new voters

The electoral authorities said the initiative was intended to ensure that no eligible voter was left off the rolls, with particular emphasis on registering first-time voters.

As part of the exercise, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will compare the electoral rolls published after the SIR in April 2026 with the voter lists issued in January 2025.

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They will compile a list of voters who appeared on the January 2025 rolls but were missing from the April 2026 list. Officials will then conduct door-to-door verification to establish the status of those excluded.

“During the visits, BLOs would also help eligible but unregistered citizens, including first-time and young voters, submit Form 6 for enrolment,” an election official told The Federal.

Registration camps, awareness campaigns

The campaign was announced after the state’s electoral authorities met representatives of political parties last week.

As part of the drive, the EC will organise registration camps at polling booths and establish special camps for residents of night shelters, labour colonies, homeless people and other marginalised communities. Awareness campaigns through educational institutions, Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) activities, media briefings and local outreach programmes will also be conducted.

Also read: SIR explained: From voter deletions to Form 6, what has changed?

The state has also asked the EC to conduct the annual summary revision of electoral rolls with January 1, 2027, as the qualifying date ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections.

Reinstate pre-SIR voter list, say political parties

Political parties and civil society groups, however, have questioned whether the campaign will adequately address the discrepancies arising from the SIR. While they have been working to help excluded voters secure enrolment, they argue that the underlying exercise must be scrapped.

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“An exercise that is inherently flawed and discriminatory should be scrapped as such. The only logical step would be to scrap the April 2026 list and accept the one that was existing before the SIR was conducted. Meanwhile, they can continue the drive to add new voters, which keeps happening before every election,” Seema Azad, president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), told The Federal.

Last month, The Federal reported that the SIR had resulted in the deletion of 2.04 crore voters in Uttar Pradesh, reducing the electorate from 15.44 crore to 13.39 crore. The exercise also flagged 2.22 crore voters for alleged logical discrepancies and classified another 1.04 crore as unmapped, raising concerns about verification gaps and the possible exclusion of eligible voters.