4 min readPuneJul 3, 2026 12:57 PM IST
First published on: Jul 2, 2026 at 10:45 PM IST
Standing outside the door of a resident’s house in a housing colony in Bibwewadi, Block Level Officer (BLO) Ashish Padale rings the bell and introduces himself. “I am from the election office. We are working on correction of voter rolls,” he tells the woman answering the door. He pulls out the enumeration form for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Padale spent the next 20 minutes getting various information like birth date, parental information, and Voter ID details of the three people in the household assigned to him. One of the residents had passed away, informed the lady, but she did not have her death certificate on hand. “Take my phone number and please send it to me later so we can remove her from the voter roll,” says Padale.
Padale has to repeat this process for over 950 residents he has been assigned in the area. The Election Commission of India is currently conducting the Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls in various states. The door-to-door distribution and collection of forms has to be finished by July 29. Over 8,000 BLOs have been assigned to Pune district for the process.
However, the onset of monsoon in Maharashtra, a lack of awareness about the SIR, and incomplete addresses in many cases are proving to be major hurdles in the process. The forms are supposed to be distributed by the BLOs, filled by the residents, and collected back by BLAs or BLOs. However, more than a dozen BLOs The Indian Express spoke to said that they were filling the forms on the spot. All of the BLOs also expressed that finishing the enumeration forms in time seems impossible.
“There is not much awareness about the SIR. One couple told me that they would not have let me in the house if I had come alone, lucky I have brought my wife along,” said Padale.
Common addresses
A BLO working near Swargate said that a large number of residents in the list provided to him had no proper address. “Just a vague area is mentioned along with a house number. Sometimes even the house number is not mentioned and phone numbers are not there. How are we supposed to find people?”
A BLO from the Kothrud area in Pune said that she had been assigned over 1100 voters. “I am focusing on the 400 voters covered in the SIR pre-mapping in the first 10 days, so that there is some fruitful result. I have not yet begun working on the unmapped voters or those whose addresses are not complete. However, finishing the whole list by the deadline seems a little impossible.”
Another BLO from the Kondhwa region said that 80 per cent of the voters in the list provided to him have a common address in the form of an area name. Working as a teacher at a PMC school, he said, “The school timings are from 11 to 5. How are we supposed to finish the work in this kind of situation? It will take a lot of time to find the addresses.”
Rural Areas
Officials from rural areas described a similar situation. A BLO from Junnar taluka, who had 796 residents assigned to him, said that people in his area were more aware of the issue. A ZP school teacher, the BLO said, “I will have to either take a half-day from school or work after school. It does not seem possible to finish the forms in 30 days. But we will finish as much as we can.”
A BLO from Ambegaon taluka, a gram panchayat employee, said, “People are unaware of the SIR so we really have to explain to them what is happening. It will be difficult to finish my 1400 forms as I am alone in this region and I do not have a vehicle. I am travelling with my husband on his bike. Rain is also playing a spoilsport.”
Collector says enough time
District Collector Jitendra Dudi however remained steadfast and said that the process would be completed on time. “We will be able to complete all work on time. We have provided additional staff with the BLOs as well,” he told The Indian Express.
The district administration has deployed 8,417 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the exercise.(Express Photo by Soham Shah) 
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