Deemed ineligible

Why in the News

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has shifted the burden of staying on the roll from the state to the voter, and the Supreme Court has now called part of that design an “error”. At a hearing on the Delhi SIR, a Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India said the Election Commission of India (ECI) was wrong to make struck-off voters reapply as new voters.

What is the SIR, and what has the Court objected to?

1. What it is: The SIR is a time-bound, house-to-house check of every entry on the voter list by Booth Level Officers (BLOs). It works like a fresh census of voters, not a routine annual update.
2. Legal basis: The ECI acts under Article 324 and the Representation of the People Act, 1950. The Act allows a special revision of the roll at any time, for recorded reasons.
3. What went wrong: Voters who did not return enumeration forms (the SIR’s verification forms) were deleted:
   • they were told to reapply on Form 6, the form for new voters;
   • a mere change of address became a ground for deletion, even for past voters.
4. The Court’s questions: The Bench questioned whether non-response justifies deletion:
   • should a voter who was “lax, inert or did not respond” “forfeit his or her right to vote forever”?
   • why could shifted voters not simply disclose their new details?
   • why could deleted voters not fill enumeration forms late?
5. The takeaway: Placing the burden on voters turns a clean-up of the rolls into a test that ordinary citizens can fail.

How large are the deletions?

1. Shifted and absent: The share of draft deletions marked “shifted” or “absent” rose from 55% in Bihar to 72% in the States and Union Territories of the third phase.
2. Karnataka’s deletions: About 84 lakh electors were deleted as shifted or absent, but only a net 8.2 lakh, including new electors, were added during the claims phase.
3. Short of the adult population: Karnataka’s final roll is 64.5 lakh short of its projected adult population.
4. Earlier practice: In the 2002-03 revision, enumerators enrolled shifted voters at their new homes and the Chief Electoral Officer reconciled old entries. Forcing re-registration defeats the ECI’s mandate of widening the franchise, that is, enrolling every eligible citizen.

Do the ‘logical discrepancy’ checks have legal backing?

1. No statutory basis: The ECI runs algorithm-driven “logical discrepancy” checks. Two of them judge eligibility by family size and by a voter’s age gap with their parents, and no statute or rule permits either.
2. Unsettled legality: The Bench noted that these checks were allowed only as an “interim arrangement” in West Bengal, and their legality has not been finally decided.
3. Bihar ruling not binding: The Bench also noted that the Court’s earlier Bihar judgment is not a “binding precedent” for later revisions, so it does not settle their legality.
4. Uneven impact: In West Bengal the checks led to massive disenfranchisement, meaning eligible people lost the vote. An analysis of Delhi’s rolls found Muslims disproportionately flagged.

Is the problem a lapse or the design?

1. The ECI’s rationale: An intensive revision aims to purge ghost voters, meaning dead, duplicate or permanently shifted entries, so that only eligible citizens vote.
2. Design, not lapses: Critics hold that the final SIR rolls are erroneous because deletions flowed from a flawed design, not from occasional lapses by officials.
3. Limits of managerial fixes: Past orders such as extended deadlines or printed lists displayed in blocks do not cure a design flaw.

Challenges

1. Documentation hurdles: Demands for birth certificates or old records exclude people without formal papers.
2. Overburdened BLOs: Tight targets and deadlines push Booth Level Officers into hasty “shifted” markings.
3. Slow grievance redressal: Many claims remain unresolved when the roll is frozen before polls.

Way Forward

1. Restore wrongly removed voters: Include again every voter wrongly dropped from the draft rolls, and add newly eligible electors.
2. Remove only dead and duplicate entries: Delete the dead and duplicate entries the SIR identified, and reconcile shifted voters at their new address.
3. Legal basis first: Notify any eligibility check in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 before applying it.
4. Settle the ECI’s conduct: The Supreme Court should settle questions over the ECI’s conduct of the SIR and how its members are appointed.

Conclusion

The Court’s remarks move the debate from how the SIR was run to whether its design can lawfully remove voters at all. Whether the Court orders wrongly deleted voters restored, rather than another managerial fix, will decide the credibility of the final rolls.

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?”