Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party has launched preparations for the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections with a special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter list.
The party plans to verify voters house to house at the booth level to identify fake entries and eliminate duplicate names.
Party leaders believe that if the campaign succeeds, it could prove to be a masterstroke for the upcoming polls. The drive comes at a time when the BJP has started groundwork for assembly elections alongside the panchayat polls. According to the State Election Commission, nearly 1.5 crore names currently appear both in the rural and urban electoral rolls.
The party suspects a similar pattern in the assembly rolls, with voters registering at both village and city addresses. There are also apprehensions that a significant number of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and fake voters may be listed.
Sources said the BJP will soon begin the SIR exercise using the 2003 and 2024 electoral rolls as the base. The Election Commission has uploaded the 2003 voter list online, and the party has started downloading the data. These lists will be handed over booth-wise to booth committees, which will compare names to identify additions and deletions. After verification, the committees will submit reports to booth-level agents and district presidents, who will forward them to district election officers for official corrections.
The main objective of the SIR campaign is to eliminate fake names before the assembly polls while ensuring every voter aligned with the BJP-RSS ideology is included. Special attention will be paid to constituencies where the party lost narrowly in 2022, as well as seats dominated by opposition parties.
The BJP suffered setbacks in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections due to alleged irregularities in voter lists. Reports suggested that thousands of BJP-leaning voters were deleted from rolls in every constituency. Party leaders cited this as a major reason for losses and have stressed vigilance in the new campaign.
The party has directed booth committees to identify voters whose names were deleted in 2024 and ensure their inclusion this time. Leaders say restoring these names is as important as removing fake entries.
The Election Commission has already announced that SIR will be conducted across states, including Uttar Pradesh, before the assembly elections. A senior BJP functionary said the party aims to complete one phase of its own revision before the official process begins and then run another phase parallel to the commission’s drive.
The Samajwadi Party and Congress have also prepared to monitor the revision closely. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has warned that if the exercise is manipulated and the Election Commission functions as a “jugaad commission” for the BJP, people may take to the streets as seen in neighboring countries. Party insiders say the SP, out of power for more than eight years, will scrutinize every booth list carefully.