The Election Commission on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that political parties are creating “a scare” about the special intensive revision of voter lists underway in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, among other states, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing pleas against the validity of the exercise. The court will hear Tamil Nadu’s petition on December 4 and that of West Bengal on December 9.

On the Kerala government’s plea to defer the process, the bench asked the poll panel and the state election commission to file its response by December 1. The matter will be heard on December 2.

The Kerala government has sought to postpone the revision of voter rolls in the state until after local body elections in December. The state government said that revising the voter lists and conducting the polls simultaneously will lead to an “administrative impasse” and disrupt the elections.

However, on Wednesday, the Election Commission told the court that 99% of the voters in Kerala had been given enumeration forms and 50% of them had been digitised, Live Law reported.

The poll panel contended that there was no need to defer the exercise because of the local body polls. The Election Commission said that it and the state poll panel were “not finding it difficult”, Live Law reported.

On November 14, the Kerala High Court refused to defer the process in the state.

The revision exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories. Booth-level officers began distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

Besides Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the voter rolls are being revised in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

A “special revision” of the voter list, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll, will take place in Assam separately.

Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Puducherry and Assam are expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.

The draft electoral rolls in the 12 states and Union Territories will be published on December 9. Voters can file claims and objections between December 9 and January 8, and hearings will be held until January 31. The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 7.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

Tamil Nadu’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam had moved the Supreme Court on November 3 against the voter list revision in the state, describing it as a “constitutional overreach”.

Also read: ‘In Bengal, SIR is NRC’: Why revision of the electoral roll has spread panic in the state