Kottayam: A booth-level officer (BLO) sustained injuries to her neck and face in Kerala’s Kottayam district on Thursday after a local man allegedly released his dog on her while she was carrying out enumeration work for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

The incident occurred in Pakkil, Kottayam, where the officer was on duty distributing voter enumeration forms. “I was on SIR duty in Kottayam, Pakkil, and while on duty, I was bitten by a dog several times. The injuries are making it hard to do the survey,” the officer told ANI.

She is among the 171 BLOs assigned to the Kottayam Assembly constituency and was posted at Booth No. 123, located at CMS LP School, Pakkil. According to the Election Commission of Kerala, over 1,500 BLOs have been deployed across the Kottayam district.

The distribution of enumeration forms marks the start of the SIR exercise, which is currently underway across 12 states and union territories, including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the second phase of the SIR on October 27, with the final electoral roll scheduled for publication on February 7, 2026. Printing and training activities were conducted from October 28 to November 3, followed by the enumeration phase from November 4 to December 4.

The draft electoral rolls will be released on December 9, after which voters will have until January 8, 2026, to file claims and objections. The notice phase for hearings and verifications will run from December 9 to January 31, 2026, ahead of the publication of the final rolls in February.

Drawing on its experience from the first phase of SIR in Bihar, the ECI has directed that BLOs may visit each household up to three times to verify and link voter details. “If the elector is not available or there is a delay in matching and linking, the BLOs will visit the houses a total of three times. Electors can also fill out the forms online. If their names, or their parents’ names, were not on the 2003 list, the ERO will determine eligibility based on supporting documents,” Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said at a press conference on October 27.

Meanwhile, the Kerala government is expected to join Tamil Nadu in petitioning the Supreme Court against the second phase of the SIR. However, both the BJP and the Election Commission have maintained that the exercise is essential to “purify” the electoral rolls.

The last nationwide Special Intensive Revision was conducted in 2002.

ANI inputs