Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and Electoral Roll Integrity

04 Oct 2026

Tags: Polity & Constitution   Electoral System   Key electoral mechanisms

Source: The Hindu

Context: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has triggered protests by Opposition parties, student groups and civil society groups, who allege that the exercise is resulting in large-scale disenfranchisement.

• The controversy has intensified following the Supreme Court’s upholding of the constitutional validity of SIR, after which the Election Commission of India (ECI) expanded the exercise across States and Union Territories (UTs).
• The central concern is whether the procedure for revision of electoral rolls is compatible with universal adult franchise and free and fair elections.

What is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR)?

• SIR is an intensive exercise undertaken by the ECI to verify and update electoral rolls, including identifying eligible voters and removing ineligible, deceased, duplicate or otherwise disqualified entries.
• The present exercise has expanded beyond the methodology initially used in Bihar, incorporating an additional exclusion criterion called “logical discrepancies”, first used in West Bengal.
• The exercise has subsequently been extended from States to Union Territories as well.

Major Concerns Raised Over the Current SIR

• Burden of proof shifted to electors: The enumeration process places substantial responsibility on voters to establish their eligibility, with some names being deleted first and verified subsequently.
• Difficult restoration process: Voters whose names are removed from the draft rolls must identify the deletion and undertake a potentially onerous process to get their names restored.
• Easy deletion mechanism: Requests for deletion of names can reportedly be filed in large numbers and processed relatively quickly, creating scope for wrongful exclusions.
• Large-scale exclusions: Nearly 13.4 crore electors have reportedly been removed from draft rolls across 30 States and UTs—around 14% of the pre-revision electorate.
• Increasing scale of deletions: The proportion of electors removed has risen across phases—8.3% in Bihar, 12.9% across 12 States/UTs in Phase 2 and 17% in Phase 3.

Procedural Issues

• The ECI has maintained that deleted electors can re-enter the rolls during the claims phase, but they may have to apply as fresh applicants after discovering that their names have been deleted.
• Form 6, used for inclusion of names in electoral rolls, was reportedly modified to ask applicants whether they or their parents/grandparents appeared on the electoral roll of the last SIR, without a corresponding amendment to the relevant rules.
• Members of the ECI reportedly objected to these procedural changes, arguing that the changes were not legally authorised.
• In West Bengal, 16.1 lakh deletion requests were reportedly made against electors who had already been cleared by judicial officers.
• A centralised electoral-roll database in New Delhi reportedly facilitated the processing of such deletion requests.

Corrective Measures by the ECI

• The ECI subsequently instructed Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to restore deleted voters to electoral rolls.
• The article interprets this corrective action as an implicit acknowledgment that the revision process may have resulted in wrongful disenfranchisement.
• However, the corrective measures have been criticised as inadequate because restoration requires affected voters to first discover their exclusion and then undertake the prescribed process.

Institutional Accountability

• The article argues that the two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, could have exercised their majority within the ECI to overrule the CEC if they disagreed with the procedure.
• This raises broader questions about collective decision-making, institutional checks and accountability within the Election Commission.

Constitutional & Democratic Significance

• Universal adult franchise: Article 326 provides for elections to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies on the basis of adult suffrage, subject to constitutionally permitted disqualifications.
• Electoral rolls: Accurate electoral rolls are essential because wrongful exclusion can effectively prevent an otherwise eligible citizen from exercising the right to vote.
• Free and fair elections: Electoral-roll revision must balance removal of ineligible entries with protection against wrongful exclusion of eligible citizens.
• The controversy therefore concerns not merely administrative revision of electoral rolls but the relationship between electoral integrity, inclusion and democratic participation.

Key Institutions/Terms for UPSC

• Election Commission of India (Article 324): Constitutional body vested with the superintendence, direction and control of elections to Parliament, State Legislatures, and the offices of President and Vice-President.
• Booth Level Officer (BLO): Grassroots election official responsible for electoral-roll-related verification and field-level interaction with voters.
• Claims and objections: The electoral-roll revision process provides an opportunity for citizens to seek inclusion/correction and object to wrongful entries or deletions.
• Form 6: Application form used for inclusion of a name in the electoral roll, subject to the applicable electoral-roll rules.