Bhubaneswar: Preparations for the upcoming Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Odisha have reached their final stage, even as the Election Commission is yet to announce the formal schedule for the exercise.
A senior election official said on Tuesday that the state has been working continuously over the past several months to ensure the revision is carried out smoothly and comprehensively.
Additional Chief Electoral Officer and Special Secretary Sushanta Kumar Mishra said Odisha has been preparing for the SIR for nearly five months. The exercise, which is being conducted after a long gap of 23 years, was last undertaken in the state in 2002.
“We have been making preparations for the last five months, and it is almost at the final stage,” Mishra said, underscoring the scale and importance of the revision process.
As part of the preparations, the state has significantly expanded its polling infrastructure. The number of polling booths has increased to nearly 43,000 from around 36,000, with the addition of about 7,000 new booths. Mishra said the objective is to limit the number of voters at each booth to around 1,200, ensure that every eligible voter is properly registered, and strengthen electoral arrangements ahead of future elections.
To support the exercise on the ground, around 45,000 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) have been appointed and trained in phases. In addition, training programmes have been conducted for district election officers, most of whom are district collectors, as well as assistant returning officers in the rank of additional district magistrates.
Explaining the technical aspects of the revision, Mishra said the SIR process involves integrating voter data from the 2002 electoral rolls with the latest 2025 rolls. This is aimed at ensuring that voters whose names appeared in earlier lists continue to remain valid, while new eligible voters are added systematically.
He added that nearly 70 per cent of the mapping work has already been completed and the remaining work will be finalised before the publication of the updated electoral rolls.
