The ECI must end its method of deleting first and verifying later

Why in the News

A counter affidavit filed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the Supreme Court shows that of more than 38 lakh appeals submitted to Special Intensive Revision (SIR) appellate tribunals in West Bengal, just over 1,22,000 were disposed of by early September 2026, a disposal rate of 3.2 percent. Of those decided, 1,13,943 electors were added back to the rolls, an inclusion rate of nearly 93 percent. The appeals arose from the claims and corrections phase, in which judicial officers deployed for verification deemed 27 lakh of the 60 lakh electors flagged for “logical discrepancies” to be ineligible. The conduct of the ECI is itself what is in question here, because the appellate outcome is evidence about the quality of its own deletion stage. The tension is that a body committed to the position that not one eligible elector should be left out is removing electors at a rate its own appellate machinery reverses nine times in ten, and reversing them far slower than it removed them.

What is the Special Intensive Revision and how does it work?

1. The exercise: It is a house to house revision of the electoral roll in which every existing elector is required to establish eligibility afresh rather than be carried forward from the previous roll.
2. The enumeration stage: Enumeration forms are distributed to households, and an elector who does not return a completed form enters the next stage as unverified.
3. The mapping requirement: Electors are required to link themselves to rolls drawn in the early 2000s, and a failure to match produces a recorded “discrepancy”.
4. The adjudication stages: Flagged cases go to judicial officers deployed for verification in the claims and corrections phase, and a deletion at that stage can be contested before an appellate tribunal.

What do the West Bengal appeal numbers show?

1. The scale of contest: More than 22 lakh of those found ineligible have appealed, which is over four fifths of the 27 lakh deleted at the verification stage.
2. The disposal rate: Just over 1,22,000 of more than 38 lakh appeals had been disposed of by early September 2026, a rate of 3.2 percent.
3. The inclusion rate: ECI data show that more than nine in 10 cases decided by the tribunals have ended with the elector back on the rolls, an inclusion rate of nearly 93 percent.
4. What the two rates imply together: If these rates hold, the majority of the 27 lakh electors should not have been found ineligible in the first place, and are now struggling to get back on the rolls.

Why does the appellate record indict the deletion stage rather than vindicate the appeal?

1. The error rate is the finding: A tribunal restoring 93 percent of the cases it decides is not a functioning safety valve, it is a measurement of how wrong the stage below it was.
2. Remedy slower than harm: Deletion was completed across the State while barely one appeal in thirty has been decided, so the correction cannot catch the error inside an electoral cycle.
3. The timing of the harm: The deletions preceded the West Bengal Assembly polls, which means the disenfranchisement took effect at the one moment the roll actually decides anything.
4. The next deadline is already close: Municipal elections in the State are approaching, so the same unrestored electors face a second poll off the rolls unless the appellate process is accelerated.

What does the Delhi draft roll show about the enumeration itself?

1. The arithmetic anomaly: In Phase 3 of the SIR, in 24 of Delhi’s 70 constituencies, the draft roll now records fewer electors than the number who actually voted in the February 2025 Assembly election.
2. Why the innocent explanations do not hold: Such large scale deletion cannot hold unless there was major migration out of the capital region or large numbers of voters were never ordinarily resident in Delhi, and neither is plausible at that scale.
3. The more plausible reading: The enumeration itself has struck off actual voters, since the process puts the onus of proving eligibility on the elector and the dropping of enumeration forms at homes has not translated into full enumeration.
4. Discrepancies manufactured by the method: Requiring electors to link themselves to rolls drawn in the early 2000s produces recorded discrepancies even where the documents submitted are valid.
5. The current exposure: In Delhi this mapping has put 13.79 lakh electors under notice, with a further 19.33 lakh flagged for logical discrepancies on undefined grounds.

What has the Supreme Court’s role been across the SIR phases?

1. The Bihar intervention: While hearing the Bihar SIR petitions, the Court intervened sharply to stop eligible voters from being struck off.
2. The year since: Its permissiveness in the year since has allowed disenfranchisement on a scale that will remain a mark on the jurisprudence of universal adult franchise in India.
3. The present hearings: The Court is now hearing petitions on Delhi and West Bengal, and the remedy sought is that it compel the ECI to reverse course.
4. The shared formulation: The Court has used the same refrain as the ECI, that not one eligible elector should be left out of the rolls, which makes the gap between the standard and the record the question before it.

Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision as it is being run

1. The burden of proof sits on the elector: A revision that presumes ineligibility until documents are produced falls hardest on those least able to produce them. Eg. Delhi’s mapping to rolls of the early 2000s has put 13.79 lakh electors under notice.
   The Fix: Reverse the presumption, so an elector on the last final roll stays on it unless the Electoral Registration Officer records positive evidence of ineligibility.
2. “Logical discrepancies” is an undefined category: Flagging on grounds the notice does not state leaves the elector unable to answer the objection. Eg. A further 19.33 lakh electors in Delhi were flagged on undefined grounds.
   The Fix: Publish the exhaustive list of discrepancy codes and require every notice to carry the specific code and the underlying record relied on.
3. No deadline binds the appellate stage: Deletion runs to an electoral calendar while restoration runs to none, so the two stages operate at incompatible speeds. Eg. The West Bengal tribunals had disposed of 3.2 percent of appeals by early September 2026.
   The Fix: Fix a statutory outer limit for disposal of an SIR appeal and bar the publication of a final roll until pending appeals in that constituency are decided.
4. Field capacity is stretched by the timetable: Booth Level Officers carry the enumeration load on top of their regular duties, so form coverage is incomplete before the deletion stage begins. Eg. Enumeration forms dropped at homes in Delhi did not translate into full enumeration.
   The Fix: Publish constituency wise enumeration coverage before the draft roll, and extend the enumeration window wherever coverage falls below a declared threshold.
5. There is no published audit of deletions: No independent check runs between the verification decision and the publication of the draft roll. Eg. The scale of the error in West Bengal became visible only through the appellate inclusion rate, after the Assembly polls.
   The Fix: Require a random sample audit of deletions by an authority outside the district election machinery, with the sample error rate published alongside the draft roll.

Conclusion

The appellate inclusion rate is the clearest available measure of how the verification stage performed, and it points to a deletion process that was wrong far more often than it was right. Restoring an elector after the vote has been held is not a remedy, because the right that was lost was exercisable only on one day. The two things that cannot both hold are the ECI’s stated commitment that no eligible elector be left out and a revision method that removes first and verifies afterwards, and nothing in the current design reconciles them. What to watch is whether the Court, in the Delhi and West Bengal petitions, ties the publication of a final roll to the disposal of pending appeals.

Back2Basics

1. Representation of the People Act, 1950: It provides for the allocation of seats and the delimitation of constituencies, and it governs the qualification of voters and the preparation of electoral rolls.
2. The ordinarily resident test: A person is entitled to registration in a constituency only if ordinarily resident in it, and registration in more than one constituency is barred.
3. Who prepares the roll: The Electoral Registration Officer for each constituency prepares and revises the roll, under the superintendence and control of the Election Commission of India.
4. The appeal route: An order of the Electoral Registration Officer on inclusion or deletion is appealable to the designated appellate authority, which is the machinery the SIR tribunals sit within.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”