Hyderabad: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday, September 7, extended the schedule for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Telangana for the third time, pushing the final publication of the voter list to November 9 from October 19.
Under the revised schedule announced by Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Sudharsan Reddy, electors can now file claims and objections until October 7 instead of September 16, while the notice phase and disposal of claims and objections have been extended to November 5 from October 15. The period for both began on August 17.
The extension is the third since the exercise began in Telangana on June 25 and follows requests from both the state government and the CEO.
Under the original schedule, house-to-house visits by Booth Level Officers (BLO) were to run from June 25 to July 24, with the draft roll due on July 31 and claims and objections open until August 30. In a first revision issued on July 15, the ECI extended BLO visits to August 3, moved the draft publication to August 10, and set final publication for October 12.
A second revision on August 1 pushed BLO visits to August 10, draft publication to August 17 and final publication to October 19, with October 1 retained as the qualifying date.
Chief Minister Revanth Reddy wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on August 29 seeking a four-week extension of the claims and objections window, arguing that one month was too short for an exercise of this scale, with barely a fortnight of it remaining at the time.
In his letter, Revanth Reddy noted that of the 3.38 crore electors on the roll as it stood on June 10, some 73.39 lakh entries, or 21.7 per cent, had been placed under the Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD) categories. Of the 2.65 crore enumeration forms digitised, 60.50 lakh were flagged for anomalies and 32.36 lakh for want of a link to the 2002 roll.
He also urged that ordinary mobility should not effectively operate as a disqualification for electors and pointed out that no election was due in the state in the near future.
The state CEO subsequently wrote to the ECI seeking a three-week extension.
Roughly 93 lakh electors in Telangana are currently receiving notices under the SIR exercise. Hearings on these notices, along with document verification, will now continue until November 5.
This post was last modified on September 7, 2026 6:31 pm