The Election Commission is set to hold a press conference on Monday evening to announce pan-India Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters' list, it said on Sunday.
The official press invite for the meeting states it will start at 4:15 pm on Monday.
While the invitation does not mention the purpose of the press conference, officials confirmed it will be about the SIR across India.
The poll body is expected to announce the first phase of SIR, in which 10 to 15 states will be covered, including those going to Assembly polls in 2026.
Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry are scheduled to go to polls next year.
The meeting will be held at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, according to the Election Commission.
In the first phase of the pan-India SIR, states including Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal, which are set to go into polls next year, will be among the first ones where the exercise to clean up voters' lists will begin.
The EC will not hold the electoral roll cleanup exercise in states where local body elections are taking place or are due, as the grassroots poll machinery is busy with it and may not be able to focus on SIR, officials said earlier.
The EC will conduct SIR for such states during later phases.
Supporting the SIR in West Bengal, state BJP President Samik Bhattacharya said that it must undergo a transparent and thorough revision of voter lists.
“The people of West Bengal want the correct voter list to be presented before them. The names of the deceased, the names of infiltrators, and the elections being held by listing one name in four places should be stopped,” he said.
However, the ruling Trinamool Congress has opposed the SIR exercise in West Bengal.
The EC had earlier this week directed the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) to finalise their preparations for the SIR exercise in their states and Union Territories.
According to the press release, the Commission assessed the progress made on the directions previously issued to the CEOs to map the current electors with the electors as per the last SIR in their respective States and UTs.
This comes in the backdrop of CEC Gyanesh Kumar's announcement for a nationwide SIR, after an SIR of the electoral roll in the poll-bound Bihar.
In Bihar, the total number of electors in the final list stands at 7.42 crore, while there were 7.89 crore electors as of June 24 this year. A total of 65 lakh voters were removed from the draft list. In addition, 3.66 lakh ineligible electors were removed from the final list while 21.53 lakh eligible electors were added via Form 6, taking the total to 7.42 crore voters.
(With agency inputs)
