The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, calling the exercise legally valid and closely linked to the constitutional mandate of conducting free and fair elections.
The case arose after the SIR carried out ahead of Bihar’s Assembly election last year led to the deletion of about 65 lakh names from the voter list, prompting petitions challenging the process. Similar SIR exercises were later undertaken in states scheduled for Assembly polls, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Jaymalya Bagchi held that Article 324 of the Constitution empowers the Election Commission to undertake such special revisions when it considers them necessary. The court said the credibility of democratic processes depends on the accuracy, reliability and purity of electoral rolls, not merely on the act of voting.
The Bench examined whether the SIR exceeded the Commission’s powers, whether the procedure was legally fair, and whether it violated the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and related rules. It concluded that the exercise did not breach the law and instead advanced the constitutional goal of free and fair elections.
The court also accepted the Commission’s reasoning that rapid urbanisation and migration can lead to duplicate entries and errors, making such an exercise necessary to protect the integrity of voter lists. It added that while the Commission can examine citizenship while assessing eligibility for inclusion, deletions from the rolls are not a final determination of a person’s citizenship.
