Poll panel's SIR orders for Bihar, other states and UTs were unanimous: EC sources amid row

The Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners “unanimously” approved the orders pertaining to the Special Intensive Review (SIR) process for Bihar and other states, sources in the Election Commission said on Friday amid an ongoing row over alleged disagreement within the poll body.

The SIR process has been conducted in three phrases across the country so far – starting with Bihar in the first phase. The second phases included 12 states and union territories – Andaman & Nicobar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The third phase, announced in May this year, covered 16 states and three union territories. These were Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, Uttarakhand, union territories of Delhi, Chandigarh, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

This comes amid row over a newspaper report that alleged that that the decisions taken on SIR process were objected to by two of the three poll commissioners, a claim refuted by the poll body saying that “internal checks-and-balances are standard” practice in a multi-member constitutional body.

“All actions of ECI have been in accordance with laws and instructions of the Commission,” the poll body said in a statement on Wednesday. After the row turned into a flashpoint between the government and the Opposition, the poll body said its three members may have individual views, observations or suggestions during deliberations, but all final decisions of the poll body are taken unanimously.

“Differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution. They are a part of the decision-making process before a final decision is taken. Not only the three Commissioners, but every officer of the Commission is fully authorised to give his suggestions to the Commission for improving the electoral system,” the statement said.

Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025.

He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India.

He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach.

He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014.

His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014).

He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K.

Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More