Sikkim voters excluded from final SIR Roll get 15 days to appeal: CEO Raj Yadav

Voters whose names have been excluded from Sikkim’s newly published Final Electoral Roll under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) 2026 will have 15 days to file an appeal, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Raj Yadav said.

According to Yadav, an elector who finds their name missing from the Final Roll can first approach the District Collectorate. If the matter remains unresolved, the elector can subsequently approach the CEO’s office within the stipulated 15-day appeal period.

The clarification comes a day after the Election Commission published the Final Electoral Roll on September 6, following the completion of the SIR exercise. A total of 54,209 electors were excluded from the final rolls, including 37,724 electors categorised under Absentee, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate (ASDD) and 16,485 electors found ineligible following formal notices and hearings.

The Final Electoral Roll now has 4,18,467 electors, comprising 2,12,534 males, 2,05,931 females and two third-gender electors. This represents a 3.42 per cent decline from the Draft Roll, which had 4,33,294 electors.

The SIR exercise, conducted with July 1, 2026 as the qualifying date, began with 4,71,018 electors on the pre-revision rolls. Enumeration Forms were distributed through Booth Level Officers, with 91.99 per cent reportedly returned. The remaining 8.01 per cent were processed under the ASDD categories.

Among the ASDD exclusions, 10,837 were attributed to deaths, 14,603 to permanent shifting, 8,648 to absentee or untraceable voters, 2,396 to duplicate or already-enrolled entries and 1,253 to other reasons.

Of the 3,61,159 electors successfully mapped to previous rolls, 52,384 were flagged as Logical Discrepancies by the ECI’s IT system, while 72,135 remained unmapped. Authorities subsequently issued 1,24,519 notices across the unmapped and discrepancy categories.

Following hearings conducted by Electoral Registration Officers and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers, 16,485 electors were found ineligible, while another 324 were deleted following Form 7 submissions citing death or shifting.

During the Claims and Objections period from July 5 to August 4, the Commission received 2,052 claims for inclusion through Form 6, 16,867 objections through Form 7 and 1,549 correction or shifting requests through Form 8. After verification, 1,982 electors were added to the Final Roll.

Constituency-wise, Upper Burtuk recorded the highest number of deletions at 3,731, followed by Shyari-BL with 3,265, Gangtok-BL with 3,099, Arithang with 3,093 and Upper Tadong with 2,774. In comparison, Sangha, Djongu and Lachen Mangan recorded 574, 759 and 828 deletions respectively.

With the Final Roll now in force, CEO Raj Yadav urged electors whose names are missing to make use of the 15-day appeal mechanism, beginning with the District Collectorate and escalating the matter to the CEO’s office if necessary.