3 min readPuneJul 3, 2026 07:17 PM IST
First published on: Jul 3, 2026 at 07:17 PM IST
The Congress has appointed just 225 Booth Level Agents (BLAs) for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Pune district, with no BLAs appointed in 16 of the district’s 21 Assembly constituencies, according to data shared by the Pune District Election Office.
In comparison, the BJP has appointed 6,201 BLAs across the district. Other parties have also deployed substantially more BLAs than the Congress, with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) appointing 3,270, the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) 990, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) 2,168 and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena 2,371. The Bahujan Samaj Party has appointed five BLAs.
Of the Congress’s 225 BLAs, 115 have been appointed in Shivajinagar, 60 in Kasba Peth, 48 in Kothrud and one each in Vadgaon Sheri and Daund. The party has not appointed any BLAs in the remaining 16 Assembly constituencies. In contrast, the BJP has appointed hundreds of BLAs in all but two constituencies.
Pune District Collector Jitendra Dudi has repeatedly appealed to political parties to appoint BLAs to facilitate the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision exercise. Door-to-door distribution of enumeration forms began on June 30 and will continue until July 9.
The district administration has deployed 8,417 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the exercise. BLAs, who are appointed by recognised political parties, assist BLOs and help voters during the electoral roll revision process.
Responding to the low number of appointments, Pune City Congress president Prashant Jagtap said the party was in the final stages of appointing its BLAs.
“We are in the final stage of filling the forms. Tomorrow and the day after, all our forms will be completed. By Monday, we will have appointed over 75 per cent of our BLAs,” Jagtap told The Indian Express.
In April, the Maharashtra Congress had urged the Election Commission to allow 18 months to two years for the Special Intensive Revision, arguing that no elections were scheduled in the state in the immediate future and that a longer timeline would ensure greater accuracy. The party noted that the previous SIR exercise, conducted in 2002-03, had taken 13 months to complete.
A delegation led by Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal had told the state’s Chief Electoral Officer that the electorate had expanded by nearly 3.5 crore over the past 25 years, making it impractical to complete the exercise within two to three months.
Following the completion of form distribution and verification, the draft electoral roll will be published on August 5. Claims and objections can be filed between August 5 and September 4, with their disposal scheduled to be completed by October 3. The final electoral roll will be published on October 7.
The district administration has deployed 8,417 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the exercise.(Express Photo by Soham Shah) 
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