The Election Commission of India (ECI) has granted a second extension for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in Maharashtra until August 17, following a request from political parties and civil society groups.A draft electoral roll will be published on August 24. (X)The process was originally scheduled to wrap up on July 29. The first extension was given last month, extending the deadline to August 8. The ECI said the second extension was granted to facilitate the smooth conduct of the exercise.As per the revised schedule, house-to-house verification will continue until August 17. A draft electoral roll will be published on August 24. Claims and objections can be filed from August 24 to September 23. The final publication of the electoral roll is scheduled for October 27.An ECI order on Tuesday said the commission has directed all election officials to adhere to the revised schedule and ensure that political parties are informed in writing about the changes.The SIR process was completed for 74.04% of voters in Maharashtra as of Tuesday. It is just 56.26% in Mumbai, 55.49% in suburban Mumbai, and 48.69% in Thane.In May, the ECI announced the roll out of Phase 3 of SIR in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, and Uttarakhand. Once the third phase is completed, the entire country except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh will be covered.Around 400,000 Booth Level Officers were assigned to go house-to-house to 367.3 million electors ahead of the publication of draft electoral rolls from July 5 to October 21. The first two phases of the SIR covered 13 states and Union Territories, and nearly 590 million electors.The latest SIR, an electoral roll cleansing drive, started with Bihar in June last year, to remove bogus, duplicate, and ineligible voters, including deceased individuals and “illegal immigrants”.The SIR sparked criticism from the Opposition, which alleged that the exercise is a strategic voter roll clean-up drive by the poll body to benefit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).The SIR exercise in West Bengal was one of the most contentious electoral revision exercises in recent years. On April 10, ECI announced the deletion of nearly nine million from the electoral roll. Out of these, around 2.7 million deletions fell under the “logical discrepancy” category.The difference in absolute votes the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) polled was similar to total SIR deletions. The TMC has maintained that the deletions helped the BJP win West Bengal elections. The BJP, which swept to power in the state for the first time, winning 207 of 294 seats, has rejected this link.