Context: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls by the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been conducted in phases since June 2025 and has expanded to cover most of the country.
- The exercise has reportedly resulted in the deletion of over 13 crore names, making questions of inclusion, exclusion and verification central to electoral integrity.
- The Supreme Court (SC) upheld the SIR exercise on May 27, while clarifying that the final determination of citizenship lies with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under the Citizenship Act, rather than with the ECI.
Rationale and Concerns with SIR
- The objective of SIR—creating clean, accurate and inclusive electoral rolls—is essential for free and fair elections; concerns primarily relate to its verification methodology.
- SIR relies heavily on house-to-house verification and documentary evidence, imposing significant burdens on citizens within compressed timelines.
- The burden can disproportionately affect poor persons, elderly citizens, migrants and women, who may face greater difficulty producing prescribed documents.
- In some States, reported links between SIR deletions and welfare records increase the potential consequences of wrongful exclusion, including loss of access to rations or pensions.
- The disposal of appeals against deletions has also emerged as a concern, with the Supreme Court pressing the ECI over delays in hearing appeals in West Bengal.
Administrative and Financial Burden
- SIR requires mobilisation of around 10 lakh public servants, predominantly schoolteachers, diverting substantial administrative resources from their regular functions.
- The exercise reportedly costs the exchequer thousands of crores of rupees in each cycle, raising questions about the sustainability of a recurring, document-intensive process.
- The article argues that a digital, Aadhaar-based verification mechanism could require a relatively modest one-time investment and significantly lower recurring verification costs.
The Citizenship Verification Problem
- A central difficulty is that electoral-roll verification and determination of citizenship are distinct functions.
- The documents demanded during SIR are not universally available or equally reliable across socio-economic groups.
- A passport, held by less than 8% of Indians according to the article, was clarified by the Ministry of External Affairs in June as a travel document rather than conclusive proof of citizenship.
- Aadhaar establishes identity and residence but is not proof of citizenship; similarly, Permanent Account Number (PAN) and voter ID do not establish citizenship.
- Birth registration was historically uneven, particularly among poorer, rural and marginalised populations, limiting its universal utility for establishing citizenship.
Lessons from Earlier Identity Exercises
- The Multipurpose National Identity Card (MNIC) pilot was eventually abandoned after difficulties in implementation.
- The National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam excluded around 19 lakh people, generating substantial hardship without conclusively resolving the underlying citizenship question.
- The National Population Register (NPR) enumerates “usual residents”, including both citizens and non-citizens, because field-level determination of citizenship was considered impractical.
- The Supreme Court’s position reinforces the institutional distinction: citizenship determination belongs to the MHA, whereas electoral-roll management falls within the ECI’s mandate.
Why Aadhaar is Proposed as an Alternative
- The article argues that Aadhaar should be used primarily for identity verification and electoral-roll authentication, rather than as independent proof of citizenship.
- Aadhaar was designed as a foundational identity system without conferring citizenship, benefits or entitlements merely through possession of the number.
- Its use could potentially reduce duplicate entries, impersonation and records relating to deceased or non-existent persons.
- The article notes that Aadhaar has already been used to clean other databases, including PAN records and welfare beneficiary databases, with reported savings exceeding ₹2.7 lakh crore.
Aadhaar and Age Verification
- For electoral purposes, the critical age-related question is whether an individual has attained 18 years, rather than establishing the exact date of birth in every case.
- Since Aadhaar biometric enrolment begins at five years, the article argues that the age of older biometric records can provide an additional basis for determining whether a person has crossed the voting-age threshold.
- However, Aadhaar's statutory purpose remains identity and residence authentication, not citizenship determination, making its appropriate legal role in electoral verification important.
Existing Aadhaar Authentication Ecosystem
- Digi Yatra uses Aadhaar-based face authentication for passenger processing; the article cites more than 10 crore face-authentication transactions through over 100 airports.
- Jeevan Pramaan enables pensioners to use digital and biometric authentication to establish that they are alive, reducing the need for physical verification.
- The article cites 1.47 crore pensioners using Jeevan Pramaan and around 500 crore Aadhaar face-authentication transactions overall.
- These applications demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale digital identity authentication, according to the article.
Aadhaar-EPIC Face Authentication: Proposed Model
- The proposed system would be a voluntary mobile/web application developed by the ECI in collaboration with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
- Voters could link Aadhaar with the Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC) and complete face authentication without submitting multiple documents or visiting an office.
- Authentication could establish that the individual is alive, while Aadhaar's uniqueness could help identify potential duplicates.
- Address information could be cross-checked, while the age threshold could be assessed using available Aadhaar records.
- Aadhaar authentication is designed to return a yes/no verification response rather than expose the underlying identity data, consistent with the article's emphasis on privacy by design.
Safeguards and Citizenship
- Aadhaar linkage would remain voluntary, with citizens unwilling or unable to use the digital mechanism retaining access to the conventional verification route.
- The article proposes using analytics to identify genuine anomalies or outliers, rather than subjecting the entire population to intensive documentary scrutiny.
- Importantly, Aadhaar authentication would not determine citizenship; cases requiring citizenship assessment would be referred to the MHA, consistent with the Supreme Court’s position.
- This approach seeks to separate identity authentication, electoral eligibility and citizenship determination, which are legally and institutionally distinct questions.
Way Forward
- The article recommends that the ECI, in collaboration with UIDAI, develop an Aadhaar-EPIC face-authentication system as the primary mechanism for routine electoral-roll revision.
- Manual verification should remain available as a safeguard for citizens who do not use Aadhaar-based authentication or whose cases require additional scrutiny.
- Any digital electoral-roll system must incorporate privacy protection, transparency, auditability, grievance redressal and effective appeals to prevent technological efficiency from causing wrongful exclusion.
- A technologically enabled electoral system should therefore combine clean rolls, universal inclusion, institutional accountability and protection of electoral rights rather than treating technological authentication as a substitute for due process.
