Context: Election Commission of India (ECI): Historically focused on expanding electoral inclusion and implementing universal adult franchise; however, the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has raised concerns about the exclusion of eligible voters.
- Scale of deletions: Across three phases covering 30 States and Union Territories, 13.37 crore names were removed at the draft-roll stage. Deletion rates rose from 8.3% in Bihar to 12.9% in Phase 2 and 17% in Phase 3, reaching 32.8% in Delhi and 21.7% in Telangana. After additions, net deletions in Phases 1 and 2 stood at about 6.2 crore.
- Delhi example: The draft roll contained 97.54 lakh electors, barely above the 94.95 lakh voters who voted in the February 2025 Assembly election; 24 of 70 constituencies had fewer electors on the draft roll than the number who had voted in that election. The ECI subsequently ordered a special enrolment drive for omitted voters.
Major Methodological Flaws in SIR
- Shift in burden of enumeration: The ECI's Manual on Electoral Rolls (2023) describes intensive revision as a fresh enumeration process, with officials visiting every household. It also states that an elector's presence on the previous roll has evidentiary value in citizenship-related scrutiny, with the burden placed on the objector. The SIR, according to the article, reverses this approach by requiring electors to establish their or their parents' presence on a previous intensive revision roll or produce supporting documents.
- Exclusion due to procedural barriers: Electors who could not be located, did not receive or return forms, or could not complete them because of illiteracy or other difficulties were omitted from draft rolls, even if they had voted in the previous election. The exercise was also conducted rapidly ahead of elections in several States.
- Difficult re-enrolment: Deleted voters must apply through Form 6, normally used for new voter registration, even when seeking restoration after deletion or an address shift within the constituency. This also makes it difficult to distinguish newly eligible voters from returning voters in published enrolment data.
- Questionable logical-discrepancy criteria: Software flagged mismatches against rolls prepared nearly two decades earlier, including spelling differences, more than six voters linked to one ancestor, and parent-child age gaps outside 15–45 years. These discrepancies were subjected to further scrutiny and could lead to deletion.
- Centralisation of electoral-roll management: Changes increasingly pass through the Electoral Roll Officers' Network (ERONet), raising concerns that centrally made alterations may override the work of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), the statutory authorities responsible for electoral registration. State officials have reportedly complained about limited visibility into such changes.
- Absence of a reliable population baseline: The delayed Census has weakened the availability of updated population data against which electoral rolls can be assessed. For example, Tamil Nadu's final roll of 5.67 crore electors was around 33 lakh below the projected figure of 6.02 crore; projections, however, are estimates rather than definitive counts of eligible electors.
State-Level Impact and Disproportionate Exclusion
- Bihar — gender disparity: Since labour migration is predominantly male, the removal of more women than men, particularly those aged 18–29 recorded as “permanently shifted”, raised concerns about exclusion. The gender ratio in the final SIR rolls fell from 907 in the 2024 Lok Sabha rolls to 892.
- West Bengal — community-level disparity: According to statistical analysis by the Kolkata-based SABAR Institute, Muslims accounted for an estimated 65% of voters deleted after adjudication for logical discrepancies, despite constituting roughly 27% of the State's population.
- West Bengal — appeals and restoration: Of 60 lakh names flagged for logical discrepancies, judicial officers deployed by the Supreme Court removed 27 lakh. Appellate tribunals subsequently restored electors in 93% of the cases decided, bringing back about one lakh names. By early September, however, only 1.22 lakh of more than 38 lakh appeals had been disposed of, while 16.1 lakh appeals sought removal of electors already found eligible by judicial officers. Delhi also had 19.33 lakh electors flagged for logical discrepancies on its draft rolls.
Judicial Review and Constitutional Concerns
- Supreme Court's approval: The Supreme Court upheld the SIR on May 27, after Phase 2 had ended and Phase 3 had been notified. The article criticises the Court for focusing initially on managerial issues rather than examining the substantive consequences of the process.
- Interpretation of Section 21(3): The provision of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, permits a special revision for any constituency or part of a constituency. Critics argue that extending this exceptional power to a State-wide exercise allowed the ECI to move away from safeguards applicable to ordinary revisions under the Registration of Electors Rules.
- Proportionality concerns: Critics argue that the Court should have examined whether less restrictive alternatives, such as door-to-door verification, could achieve the objective of cleaning electoral rolls instead of asking only whether the SIR was “manifestly excessive”.
- Earlier judicial precedent: In Lal Babu Hussein v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995), the Supreme Court struck down a sweeping revision requiring citizenship documents from nearly 18,000 residents of Delhi's Matia Mahal. The ruling emphasised the presumption of validity of an existing electoral-roll entry and the need for notice and a hearing before deletion.
- Concern over the judicial standard: The Court's finding that disenfranchisement was not sufficiently widespread or systemic to warrant intervention has been criticised for leaving the threshold for judicial intervention unclear, while subsequent phases continued to record substantial deletions.
Dissent Within the Election Commission
- Internal objections: Reports indicated that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi recorded at least 14 objections between October 2025 and August 2026.
- Form 6 controversy: One objection concerned a change requiring applicants to state whether they, their parents or grandparents appeared on the last SIR roll, without a corresponding amendment to the rules. The article argues that the ECI's subsequent administrative changes did not adequately address the underlying concerns.
Way Forward Suggested in the Article
- Judicial reconsideration: The Supreme Court should reconsider its earlier judgment through review proceedings or a Constitution Bench, halt further SIR-related deletions and order an audit of rolls already finalised.
- Restore door-to-door verification: Booth Level Officers (BLOs) should undertake household-level enumeration, reducing the burden on individual voters and enabling officials to verify eligibility directly.
- Protect upcoming elections: States approaching elections should use pre-SIR rolls updated with fresh enrolments, as suggested by the article, rather than risk excluding eligible electors through an inadequately verified revision.
- Ensure transparency and accountability: Publish auditable data distinguishing new registrations, restored voters and deletions; provide clear reasons for removal, accessible correction procedures, timely appeals and meaningful notice and hearing opportunities.
