Drive to enrol ‘left-out’ voters of Keralam to begin on October 15, 2026

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The latest campaign comes in the wake of the decision of the Election Commission of India last week to enrol the left-out, young and first-time eligible electors in 20 States and Union Territories where the SIR was completed. (Photo for representation)

Thousands of voters of Keralam, who were “left out” of the voters’ list following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, would be given the opportunity to get enrolled on the voters’ list from October 15, 2026.

A special drive to identify the genuine voters who were left out of the list would begin on the day, with hundreds of Booth Level Officers (BLO) leading the campaign. The pre-SIR and post-SIR voters’ list would be compared to identify the left-out voters. The list of dead voters of the State would be generated from the database of the local bodies, which is maintained by the Information Kerala Mission.

The details of the voters who have lost their citizenship and thus got excluded from the list would be generated from the passport offices, as they will have to surrender their Indian passport to obtain the passports of the countries of their choice. There could be cases of voters shifting to other constituencies within the State or outside. The details of such voters would be verified from the Demographic Similar Entries Module of the ERO NET software, where the details of duplicate or matching voter registrations are identified using artificial intelligence, D. Sajith Babu, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Keralam, told The Hindu.

The eligible voters, who were thus left out, will be brought back as new voters. As many as 8.97 lakh voters were removed from the voters’ list in the State after the SIR. The final list of voters, published by the Election Commission of India (EC) after the SIR, had a total of 2,69,53,644 voters, according to earlier data released by the commission.

The latest campaign comes in the wake of the decision of the EC last week to enrol the left-out, young and first-time eligible electors in 20 States and Union Territories where the SIR was completed. The SIR was completed in Keralam ahead of the Assembly polls. A series of media exposes on the functioning of the EC and the intense scrutiny on deletion of voters in various States had reportedly forced the agency to go in for the special drive.

An online meeting of the District Collectors and officials concerned of Keralam will be convened on October 5, 2026 to discuss the modalities of the campaign.

The BLOs will conduct house visits across the State with the list of eligible voters and initiate the process of enrolling them as new voters. The eligible voters will have to provide the required documents to get them enrolled as new voters. The campaign in each region will be based out of the village offices concerned, Dr. Babu said.

The CEO has also announced plans to enrol new and eligible voters from the school and college campuses starting November 2, 2026, where youngsters studying in Plus Two classes and aged 17 and above would be enrolled. The programme, from campuses to polling booths, will also see help desks being set up in educational institutions with the help of Electoral Literacy Clubs, said Mr. Babu.

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