ECI designates officials for SIR in Delhi

New Delhi: The Election Commission of Indian has designated additional district magistrates (ADMs) and sub-divisional magistrates (SDMs) as electoral registration officers (EROs) for all 70 Assembly constituencies in Delhi ahead of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the capital. The commission in Feb wrote to the chief electoral officer of Delhi and others, saying the SIR process "is expected to start on April 2026" and requested them to complete the SIR preparatory work at the earliest. An official said the Delhi CEO's office is mapping the electoral rolls of 2025 with voter details from the base year of 2002 as part of ongoing preparations for the revision. "The BLOs are mapping the voters of their areas across Delhi. They are checking the voters whose names, or the names of their family members such as parents or grandparents, appear in both 2025 and 2002. Those voters whose names do not appear in both the electoral rolls will submit enumeration forms during the SIR when it is launched," an official said. The printing of enumeration forms has also started, and the forms will be distributed across the city when the SIR exercise is launched, officials said. Delhi has a total of 13,033 polling stations and around 17,000 people are working as BLOs. Delhi had around 1.5 crore voters during the Assembly elections for 70 seats held in Feb 2025.Another notification has stated that the same officers who work as EROs will be returning officers for the Assembly constituencies.District magistrates in the national capital were designated district election officers (DEOs) for the 13 districts in Delhi. "The appointments of EROs and DEOs were also made in view of the recent reorganisation of districts in Delhi, which increased the number of districts from 11 to 13," an official said. The CEO's office recently requested Delhi govt to exempt teachers who were deployed as BLOs from census duty so that the SIR-related work does not suffer. "As of now, there are 13,033 polling stations in the NCT of Delhi and approximately 7,500 teachers of DOE/MCD were deployed as BLOs, BLO supervisors, apart from other ministerial staff etc. The teachers, if deployed for census work, may hamper the crucial work of SIR," the CEO office said in a letter to Delhi govt's revenue department. In Delhi, preparations are on for the rollout of the SIR along with the first phase of the upcoming census in 2027. Both exercises are expected to begin in April. The simultaneous start of these two largescale administrative operations is likely to create a manpower crunch, as both depend heavily on govt field staff such as teachers, clerks and other departmental employees who are typically deployed as enumerators and booth-level workers.