New Delhi: When the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls – a term that does not exist in the rule books – on June 24, 2025, it said that the exercise has been necessitated due to various reasons including the “inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants”. Yet, one year after the SIR started, the ECI is yet to provide a figure for the number of alleged “foreign illegal immigrants” that have been found on electoral rolls in the exercise that has already been conducted in 13 states and Union territories.The exercise in the last year however has thrown up a few figures – over 5 crore voters have been deleted in these 13 states and Union territories while about 27 lakh voters just in West Bengal were unable to vote in the April assembly elections and are still waiting for their appeals to be decided by judicial tribunals.The exercise has also resulted in an unprecedented denial of rights, with those deleted in the SIR now being refused welfare benefits by the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief ministers in West Bengal and Bihar. This, despite the Supreme Court in its order upholding the SIR last month, maintaining that the ECI can only verify citizenship for the purpose of preparation of electoral rolls, and determination of citizenship remains the Union government’s domain.Despite questions over its timing when it was first announced in Bihar, just ahead of assembly elections in the state, over the last year, the ECI also applied different approaches to the SIR in different states – one in Bihar, another in West Bengal, none in Assam – providing little justification for doing so.The Wire assesses the impact of the SIR as it completes one year:No number of ‘foreigners’ on rollsSince the commencement of the SIR, the BJP has weaponised the electoral roll revision to expand on its narrative of the spectre of alleged illegal immigrants in the country. From poll rallies to parliament, the BJP government has defended the electoral revision exercise in which crores of voters are being asked to submit documentary proof of their citizenship as a part of its “detect, delete, and deport” policy, with Union home minister Amit Shah saying that the SIR had only resulted in the deletion of those voters who were “not Indian citizens”.At a press conference in Patna, on October 5, days after the pilot SIR in Bihar concluded, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar did not provide any details about the number of foreign “illegal immigrants” found in the rolls. Yet that same month, when the ECI announced the commencement of the SIR in 12 states and Union territories, once again pointed to “various changes in the electoral rolls” including “wrongful inclusion of foreigners”.“Political parties in recent times have raised issues relating to the quality of electoral rolls with the Election Commission. From 1951 to 2004, about 8 times SIR has already been conducted and the last one was conducted 21 years back between 2002-2004,” Kumar said on October 27. “During these two decades there have been various changes in the electoral rolls including frequent migration resulting in voters getting registered at more than one places, non-removal of voters who have died, or wrongful inclusion of foreigners in the electoral rolls. For these reasons the Election Commission has decided to conduct a nationwide SIR in a phased manner. The first phase has been successfully conducted in Bihar,” he had said.Till now, the ECI is yet to provide any figure of how many foreigners have been found on the rolls.Not declared foreigners but citizens facing loss of rightsThough the Supreme Court in its judgement placed the final determination of citizenship with the Union government rather than the ECI, those deleted in the SIR are already facing loss of rights including welfare benefits only on account of being deleted in the SIR.The West Bengal government announced that the Annapurna Yojana scheme for cash transfers to women will not include those deleted in SIR, while earlier this month it ordered a statewide verification exercise to identify and delete “ineligible” beneficiaries from the Public Distribution System (PDS) linking it to the SIR. Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary had also said in April that 22 lakh ration cards have already been cancelled following the SIR.Citizens whose appeals are pending in the state’s 19 judicial tribunals are also facing difficulty in other government processes, as in the case of former The Telegraph editor R. Rajagopal, whose passport renewal has been held up following his deletion in the SIR.The actions are being taken by the state governments following the SIR even though the Supreme Court last month in its order upholding the exercise had said that the consequences of the ECI are limited only to inclusion in the electoral rolls.“It affects the individual’s entitlement to be included in the electoral roll and thereby their right to participate in the electoral process. It does not, however, operate to divest the individual of claims of citizenship, nor does it foreclose a determination of that question by the Competent Authority under the Citizenship Act,” it said.It further said directed the ECI to refer persons who do not meet statutory conditions to the central government.Different rules, different statesThe ECI’s SIR has also taken a different approach in different states. While in Bihar, it asked voters to fill enumeration forms, in the 12 states and Union territories where SIR was conducted in the second phase, including the poll-bound states of West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry, voters were asked to map themselves to the 2002 rolls.Further, in West Bengal, voters were required to not just “map” themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls, but had to battle a new and later criteria in the form of “logical discrepancy” which triggered duplicates and name-related mismatches that were amplified further by script conversion and rigid matching rules.The result was the electorate shrunk by about 90 lakh and 27 lakh voters were left to wait for their fate to be decided by 19 judicial tribunals less than two weeks before polls, with even the Supreme Court refusing to grant interim relief. The tribunals eventually decided on a miniscule number of cases before polling day.While the SIR was conducted ahead of the polls in Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, the ECI did not conduct the exercise ahead of the polls in Assam. The state only saw a “summary revision” despite being a border state just like West Bengal.In the remaining 16 states and 3 union territories where the exercise is now getting underway, none are going to the polls this year. Several states in the third phase, like Delhi, Maharashtra, Odisha, Jharkhand, Haryana on the other hand have just had polls in the last two years. This is in sharp contrast to justification given by CEC Kumar on the timing of the SIR close to the polls in Bihar when he said in October last year that “revision after elections is not in accordance with law”.