26

Sep

SIR Question: Cleaning Electoral Rolls or Threat to the Right to Vote?

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Dr Muzaffar Hussain Ghazali

New Delhi | Saturday | September 26, 2026
The real test of a democracy is not merely whether elections are held, but whether every eligible citizen is able to vote. That makes the electoral roll far more than an administrative document. It is the gateway through which a citizen exercises a fundamental democratic right. If an eligible voter's name disappears from the roll, the issue is not simply an administrative error; it can mean the loss of the opportunity to vote.
It is against this backdrop that the Election Commission of India's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has assumed extraordinary significance. The Commission says the exercise is intended to remove the names of deceased, permanently shifted and duplicate voters and to ensure that all eligible citizens remain on the rolls. The objective, in principle, is unexceptionable. No democracy can function properly with inaccurate electoral rolls.
The questions arise from the scale, methodology and consequences of the exercise.
The numbers raise questions
Bihar provided the first major test of SIR. On June 24, 2025, the state had approximately 7.89 crore registered voters. The draft roll published on August 1 contained about 7.24 crore names—roughly 65 lakh fewer. After claims and objections, another 3.66 lakh names were deleted while 21.53 lakh new eligible voters were added. The final roll, published on September 30, contained approximately 7.42 crore voters.
The Election Commission said its initial exercise identified around 20 lakh deceased voters, 28 lakh permanently shifted voters and about seven lakh duplicate entries. But reports also emerged of living citizens being wrongly classified as deceased or shifted. This raises an obvious question: were the earlier rolls so seriously defective, or has the SIR methodology itself become exceptionally stringent?
The second phase began on October 27, 2025, covering nine states and three Union Territories and involving about 51 crore voters. By April 2026, the combined rolls had fallen from approximately 50.99 crore to 45.81 crore—a reduction of about 5.18 crore, or 10.2 per cent—while roughly two crore new names were added.
The reported deletions included approximately 2.05 crore in Uttar Pradesh, 83.86 lakh in West Bengal, 74 lakh in Tamil Nadu, 68 lakh in Gujarat, 34.25 lakh in Madhya Pradesh and 31 lakh in Rajasthan, besides substantial numbers in other states.
Such figures demand careful scrutiny. Large-scale deletion does not, by itself, prove wrongdoing. But it does make transparency essential.
West Bengal: when verification affects the vote
West Bengal illustrates the problem particularly sharply. During the SIR process, the eligibility of approximately 60.06 lakh voters was examined by judicial officers. Following Supreme Court intervention, around 27.16 lakh names were deleted while approximately 32.9 lakh were included.
According to the Election Commission, 22.21 lakh—about 82 per cent—of those deleted appealed for restoration. In all, approximately 38.31 lakh appeals were filed. Yet recent information before the Supreme Court indicated that only about 1.02 lakh cases had been disposed of, leaving around 37.18 lakh pending. Only 1,607 voters were reportedly restored in time to vote.
This exposes a crucial weakness in the argument that an aggrieved voter can simply appeal. A restoration after polling cannot restore a vote that has already been lost.
The issue is therefore not only whether an appeal exists, but whether it can be decided before election day.
The human cost
The burden of SIR has fallen heavily on Booth Level Officers (BLOs). In Bihar, approximately 77,895 BLOs undertook door-to-door distribution and collection of forms, supported by thousands of other personnel. Verifying hundreds of millions of citizens at household level is an enormous administrative task.
Were these officials given adequate training, time, technology and manpower?
Reports from West Bengal of deaths and alleged suicides among BLOs during the exercise added another disturbing dimension. Such cases require independent examination rather than political speculation. If the officials responsible for verification are themselves under extraordinary pressure, the reliability of the process naturally becomes a matter of public concern.
Who bears the burden of proof?
Another concern is the possible impact on vulnerable sections—Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis, migrant workers, poor citizens and people living in rented or unstable accommodation. For people without permanent homes or extensive documentation, establishing links with old electoral or family records can be more difficult.
Political parties have alleged that voters are being deleted on the basis of religion or caste. However, the article notes that verifiable public data establishing such a pattern has not been made available. The Election Commission should therefore publish sufficiently detailed data so that such allegations can be tested rather than merely asserted.
Transparency is the best means of separating genuine administrative errors from political claims.
Delhi adds another layer
The issue has now acquired particular importance in Delhi. The draft electoral roll released on August 31, 2026 contained approximately 97.53 lakh voters, compared with roughly 1.45 crore earlier—a reduction of about 47.6 lakh names at the draft stage. Around 32 lakh voters have reportedly received notices.
Questions have arisen over the criteria used to identify "logical discrepancies" and the basis for issuing notices. These matters have also come under judicial scrutiny.
Recent reports that prominent public officials and politicians received SIR notices underline another important principle: the same standards must apply to every citizen. The integrity of the electoral roll cannot depend upon a person's social or political status.
Dissent within the Election Commission
The latest development has made the controversy even more significant. An investigation published by The Indian Express on September 23, 2026 reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections at least 14 times over ten months concerning decisions relating to voter registration, deletion and restoration, access to the voter database, West Bengal appeals and the Commission's IT systems.
One issue concerned Form 6, used by adults seeking voter registration. According to the report, a question was added asking whether the applicant, parents or grandparents had appeared in the electoral roll of the previous SIR. Commissioner Vivek Joshi reportedly objected that such a change could not be made without amending the relevant rules; Sukhbir Singh Sandhu subsequently described the change as unauthorised and illegal.
The two Commissioners also reportedly raised concerns about what they described as the "gradual centralisation" of the electoral-roll database and called for an audit to ensure that only legally authorised officials could alter voter data.
The Goa experience illustrates the potential danger of excessive dependence on technology. According to the report, 97 voters whom Electoral Registration Officers found eligible were nevertheless left out of the final roll because the software initially lacked a mechanism to record the reversal of their earlier deletion.
The number is small. The principle is not.
A software limitation cannot become the final authority on whether an eligible citizen can vote.
What is the real intention?
The central political question is whether SIR has a purpose beyond electoral-roll correction. The available official record does not provide conclusive evidence for answering that question either way.
The Election Commission's stated objective—to remove deceased, shifted and duplicate entries while ensuring that eligible citizens remain enrolled—is legitimate. But in a democracy, intention alone is not enough. Method and outcome matter equally.
If an exercise deletes crores of names, forces lakhs of citizens to appeal, places extraordinary pressure on BLOs and leaves large numbers of cases unresolved, the public is entitled to ask whether the process is actually improving the accuracy of electoral rolls or making it harder for eligible citizens to vote.
The reported objections from two Election Commissioners make greater institutional transparency even more important. They do not, by themselves, establish wrongdoing or prove that SIR was designed for a particular political purpose. But they raise legitimate questions about procedure, accountability and safeguards.
The answer must come from data
The SIR controversy cannot ultimately be settled through political slogans. It requires transparent data and independent scrutiny.
The Election Commission should publish state-wise figures showing how many names were deleted, why they were deleted, how many appeals were filed, how many voters were restored and how many cases remained unresolved on polling day. The functioning and workload of BLOs should also be independently assessed.
A deceased person should not remain on an electoral roll. A duplicate entry should be removed. But a living and eligible citizen should not lose the right to vote because of an administrative, documentary or technological error.
The real questions are therefore straightforward:
How many eligible citizens remained securely on the rolls? How many were wrongly excluded? How many were restored? How many could not vote because their cases were unresolved before polling day? And how many are still waiting for a decision?
These figures, rather than political assertions, will determine the credibility of SIR.
The fundamental democratic principle is simple: one citizen, one vote, with equal value for every vote.
The credibility of SIR will ultimately depend not on how many names it removes, but on whether it can demonstrate that every eligible citizen entitled to vote is able to exercise that right.That is the question the Election Commission, the government and, where necessary, the judiciary must answer.

(A freelance journalist and social activist, Dr M.H. Gazali is Delhi editor of NVN , a Mumbai-based media channel}

 

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