The Election Commission of India’s authority to conduct the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls remains under question in the Supreme Court, even as the poll body announced the SIR’s second phase which will cover 51 crore voters in 12 States and Union Territories, including Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, and Puducherry.

The Supreme Court, in a July 10 order, had highlighted the basic questions posed by petitioners challenging the first phase of the SIR exercise in Bihar. These primarily included whether the Election Commission (EC) has the “very powers to undertake the exercise”. Secondly, the court had flagged the petitioners’ objection to the “procedure and the manner in which the SIR exercise is being undertaken”.

“An important question has been raised in this bunch of petitions before this court, which goes to the very root of the functioning of a democratic republic, i.e. our country. The question is of the ‘right to vote’,” the Supreme Court had observed in July.

Violating voters’ rights

The court recorded the petitioners’ argument that the SIR, notified on June 24 under Section 21(3) of the Representation of People Act, 1950, broke that law as well as the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, apart from violating the fundamental rights of the voters. The petitioners’ counsel, including advocates Prashant Bhushan, Vrinda Grover and Neha Rathi, had argued that the SIR was only an excuse to conduct “citizenship screening”.

However, later orders of the court on the SIR had diverged into ensuring that voters were not arbitrarily excluded from the electoral roll in Bihar. Though the court did not stay the Bihar SIR exercise, it made several timely interventions to infuse more transparency into the process, order the inclusion of Aadhaar as a 12th document of proof, and to ensure the publication of the draft electoral roll, among other steps.

Learning experience

An October 9 hearing gave the first indication that a pan-India SIR had more or less become fait accompli, though the court has agreed to hear arguments on the constitutionality of SIR exercise from November 4. Addressing the EC’s counsel and senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, Justice Surya Kant, who headed the Bench, orally observed that “you [EC] have decided to carry out SIR on a pan-India basis. So, this experience [with Bihar] would have made you wiser now… The next time you introduce a SIR module, owing to what you experienced now, you would also bring some improvements.”

The second phase of the SIR in 12 States and UTs has indeed introduced modifications, such as the inclusion of Aadhaar as a proof of identity and the exemption from filing documents in the enumeration stage. The onus to be included in the voters’ list, however, continues to be shouldered by the elector. The process of enumeration itself does not have the benefit of any statutory backing.

However, the EC has asserted in the Supreme Court that it has plenary power under Article 324 to conduct the SIR and to frame procedure. In this context, it has referred to the court’s judgment in the 1978 Mohinder Singh Gill case, which observed that “Article 324 operates in areas left unoccupied by legislation and the words ‘superintendence, direction and control as well as conduct of elections are the broadest terms’. Myriad maybes, too mystic to be precisely presage, may call for prompt action to reach the goal of free and fair election… There is no hedging in Article 324. The Commission may be required to cope with some situations which may not be provided for in the enacted laws and the rules.”

Citizenship verification

Again, the question about the EC’s jurisdiction to delve into the citizenship claims of an already registered voter without any formal objection lodged against the person continues to remain open. A cardinal point raised by petitioners was whether citizenship comes under the EC’s purview when specific statutes like the Citizenship Act and the Foreigners Act already address the issues of acquisition of Indian citizenship and illegal aliens, respectively.

The new column in the modified enumeration form allows an elector to provide details of a ‘relative’ who was a voter in the last SIR. Lawyers associated with the Bihar SIR case claim this is a move to verify lineage, and recalled the ‘family tree verification’ process followed during the Assam National Register of Citizens exercise, though Assam is not part of the current SIR.

The poll body has argued it has authority to determine citizenship. The EC noted that one of the fundamental pre-conditions set out in Article 326 (adult suffrage) is that a person is required to be an Indian citizen to be registered in the electoral roll. The EC contended that to this extent it has powers to check the citizenship of electors, and insisted that the “burden to prove citizenship falls on the person who claims the right to be registered in electoral rolls”.

The petitioners have opposed the EC’s stand, saying it was plainly contrary to the top court’s 1995 judgment in the Lal Babu Hussain case, which had held that the burden of proof of citizenship would be on those who are registering anew and not on those whose names are already on the electoral roll.

Published – October 28, 2025 10:18 pm IST