Faulty design, exceptional in impact

For more than 75 years, the defining concern of the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been ‘inclusion’. The first general election in 1951-52 had to register from scratch an electorate of about 17 million, many of whom were illiterate. Successive commissioners have seen universal adult licensing as a promise to be kept, rather than just a policy to be put on paper. India could indeed be proud of being an electoral democracy where voter turnout among the poor is higher than among the rich, unlike many western democracies.

Editorial | Obstacle course: For the Special Intensive Revision exercise

The Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls initiated by the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India, Gyanesh Kumar, has reversed this progressive trend. It has been billed as an exercise to “cleanse” the electoral rolls, but in practice it is riddled with methodological errors and ad hoc rule changes that result in the exclusion of large numbers of genuine voters.

The names of 13.37 crore people were crossed out during the draft phase in 30 states and union territories in the three phases of SIR. This figure includes 65 million in Bihar, 6.57 million in the 12 states and Union Territories covered in Phase 2 and 6.15 million in Phase 3, the final roles of which are yet to be announced. The deletion rate doubled as SIR progressed — from 8.3% in Bihar to 12.9% in stage 2 and 17% in stage 3 (it was 32.8% in Delhi and 21.7% in Telangana). In Phases 1 and 2, even after names were added back, the net deletion was about 6.2 million.

In Delhi, the draft list has only 97.54 million voters, barely more than the 94.95 million voters who voted in the February 2025 assembly elections. In 24 of Delhi’s 70 constituencies, the draft list now has fewer voters than the number who voted in the elections. The ECI actually conceded the disenfranchisement point. It has now ordered officials to launch a “special drive” to register anyone “whose name has been omitted” – implicitly admitting that its rolls are missing eligible voters.

Design errors

First, the enumeration. The European Citizens’ Initiative Manual on Electoral Rolls (2023) describes intensive revision as “a de novo process without reference to a previously existing list” (paragraph 9.3.1); enumerators will visit each house and record details of each eligible resident. In the case of doubt about the citizenship of a particular voter, the Manual requires officials to state the “probative value” (paragraph 7.4.2) of their presence on the previous list, placing the burden on the objector, not the voter.

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SIR inverts this process. It shifts the enumeration to voters and assumes they are ineligible until they can trace themselves or parents to the last intensive review more than two decades ago or produce documents to prove their eligibility in something akin to a citizenship test.

Voters who were not contacted, did not receive or return the form, or were unable to fill it in – for example due to illiteracy – were dropped from the draft list, even if they had voted in previous elections. All this happened at breakneck speed, on the eve of elections in several states.

Second, re-enter. A deleted voter cannot be easily restored, even if he has only changed his address in the constituency. They have to apply via Form 6 – an application for new voters – as if they were never on the roll. As newly eligible 18-year-olds also use Form 6, the ECI makes it impossible to distinguish new voters from returning voters in the published figures, preventing a proper audit.

Third, “logical contradictions”. The software compared voters to two-decade-old lists and flagged discrepancies for review. Other arbitrary criteria included spelling differences, more than six voters linked to a single ancestor, and age differences between parents and children beyond 15 to 45 years.

This was fully implemented for the first time in West Bengal, where 60 thousand names were marked and judicial officers deployed by the Supreme Court of India struck out 27 thousand names. Since then, appointed appellate courts have reinstated voters in 93% of cases, returning about one million names to the rolls. But by early September—months after the Assembly elections—only 1.22 million out of more than 38 million appeals, or 3.2%, had cleared. In addition, 16.1 million appeals were filed to remove voters found eligible by court officials. Who authorized this on behalf of ECI remains unanswered. Meanwhile, another 19.33 lakh voters in Delhi’s draft lists have been flagged as “logical inconsistencies”.

Fourth, centralization. Changes to the lists increasingly go through the Electoral Officers Network (ERONet) database and override the Electoral Registration Officers who are the statutory authorities for eligibility. State election officials complained that they could not see the centrally made changes to the lists in their own constituencies.

Fifth, the lack of a baseline. Without the last census – which the Center has postponed – there is no solid population base to check the results. ECI also dismisses the projected population numbers as mere estimates. For example, in Tamil Nadu, the final figure of 5.67 crores is about 33 crores less than the projected 6.02 crores.

The impact of these shortfalls was drastic, but varied from state to state. In Bihar, where labor migration is predominantly male, more women than men, especially those aged 18–29, were delisted and recorded as “permanently displaced”. The gender ratio in the final SIR tosses fell to 892 from 907 in the 2024 Lok Sabha tosses.

In West Bengal, statistical analyzes by the Calcutta-based SABAR Institute, a public policy and research organization, estimated that 65% of those removed after being judged for “logical inconsistencies” were Muslims, even though Muslims make up roughly 27% of the state’s population.

Protest in Bengaluru | Photo credit: THE HINDU/ALLEN EGENUSE J.

Honorable Court

For months, the Court of Auditors limited itself to managerial interventions in the SIR. It did not rule until May 27, after Phase 2 had ended and Phase 3 had been announced, confirming the SIR.

Lawyers raised three broad substantive objections to the ruling. First, section 21(3) allows for special review “for any constituency or part of a constituency” – an exceptional and targeted power. However, the court allowed the ECI to use it for the nationwide exercise, exempting it from voter registration rules that govern routine reviews.

Second, rather than asking whether a less harmful method, such as door-to-door verification and registration, could achieve the same goal, the Court merely asked whether the SIR was “manifestly excessive.”

Third, the court avoided its own three-judge decision in Lal Babu Hussein (1995), which struck down a “massive” audit that sought citizenship documents from nearly 18,000 residents of Delhi’s Matia Mahal. The decision, which was also incorporated into the European Citizens’ Initiative handbook, ruled that a name on the electoral roll is considered valid and can only be removed after notification and a hearing.

Essentially, the court found that disenfranchisement was not sufficiently “widespread or systemic” to warrant interference without specifying what would matter instead. The ruling encouraged the ECI to continue with the flawed SIR in Phase 3, where the number of deletions skyrocketed.

Dissent from within

Reports revealed that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi registered at least 14 objections between October 2025 and August 2026. One was to amend Form 6, without changing the rules, requiring applicants to state whether they or their parents or grandparents appeared on the “last SIR” list. The ECI’s response to the revelation was a mere window dressing with some administrative changes. Since the two commissioners were in the majority, they should have used it to stop these decisions, but they did not.

The court is now hearing petitions relating to West Bengal and Delhi as well as pleas seeking suspension of the ECI by the CEC. It should use this procedure to review its judgment on review or before the Constitutional Court. It should stop the SIR and order an audit of the lists completed so far before any further deletions. The enumeration should revert to door-to-door verification by booth-level officers, while states going to polls soon should use their provisional SIR lists, updated with new applications.

Anything less would encourage a process that claims over and over again that no eligible voter will be left out while clearly doing the opposite. In a certain way, he took away more than a million real voters and maybe even millions of crowns. ECI, built to expand India’s adult franchise, has instead spent more than a year narrowing it down.

srinivasan.vr@thehindu.co.in

ponvasanth.ba@thehindu.co.in