Chief Electoral Officer tells officials to examine every claim and objection on draft rolls with care

Maharashtra Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) S. Chockalingam has instructed election officials to dispose of, within the stipulated deadline, all pending applications relating to claims and objections on entries in the draft electoral roll. This was stated in an official release issued on Thursday.

Chockalingam gave the instructions at a meeting held on November 5 at the headquarters of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in Mumbai to review the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, 2026.

He stressed that every application should be handled carefully and transparently, and that none should be left pending.

Addressing the meeting, Chockalingam said claims and objections must be examined with great care and vigilance. He also asked officials to make effective use of the extension granted by the Election Commission of India and to complete the revision process properly.

He also cautioned officials against rushing through the work merely to meet the deadline. He underlined that the process must be carried out transparently and with full diligence.

Ashwini Bhide, District Election Officer for Mumbai and BMC Commissioner, was present at the meeting, along with senior officials of the municipal corporation and the election department.

Additional District Election Officers and Additional Municipal Commissioners Prajakta Verma-Lavangare, Vipin Sharma, Abhijit Bangar and Avinash Dhakane were also present. Kiran Kulkarni, Electoral Roll Observer for the Konkan division, and Manohar Parkar, Joint Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra, also attended. Officers of the BMC's assessment and collection department and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) were there as well.

The review focused on how the SIR 2026 programme is being carried out in Mumbai.

Officials said that last week the BMC announced an extension of the deadline for publishing polling-station-wise electoral rolls for the upcoming BMC elections 2026. Under the revised schedule issued by the Maharashtra State Election Commission, the rolls can now be published up to Saturday, January 3, 2026.

The State Election Commission announced the revised schedule on December 26, 2025. The earlier deadline for publishing polling-station-wise rolls was December 27, 2025. The official release says it has been extended by a week to allow more time for completing the work and for verification.

According to the instructions given to all municipal corporations in the state, the deadlines are as follows: on December 27, 2025, lists of duplicate voters are to be published and control charts of the polling-station-wise electoral rolls are to be put up on the official website. On January 3, 2026, the polling-station-wise electoral rolls are to be published in final form.