Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls has already started in West Bengal. Now the West Bengal Congress has approached the Supreme Court against the SIR process for the voter list.
Several states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal opposed the SIR. Gujarati civil society activists also approached the Supreme Court against the trial. Among the political parties, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), CPI(M) and Left Democratic Front (LDF) also opposed the election move.
Why is the Congress in Bengal opposed?
Suman Ray Chowdhury, spokesperson of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, clarified why the party approached the apex court.
“In Bihar we saw that 44 thousand names were deleted. We don’t believe the names were deleted properly. When the form reached Bengal, it had to be modified. We also want to know why the 2002 voter list is used as the basis for SIR. Why not use any voter list after 2002? There are many records with mapping and linkage. This will delete many names while the real names will be told to Suman voters.
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“There is another problem. People born before 1987 only need to provide their own details. Those born after 1987 need details of at least one parent. People born after 2004 need to provide details of themselves and both parents. We believe SIR is being used as a backdoor to bring in the NRC,” Suman added.
Opponents of SIR often cite examples from Bihar.
Bihar: 65 thousand names of voters were deleted
About 65 million names were removed from Bihar’s draft electoral rolls during the mid-2025 SIR. This caused a great deal of controversy, leading to a case in the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has now directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to publish the district lists of all the 65 thousand struck out voters on the website of the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar and each District Electoral Officer.
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The searchable list available through EPIC numbers must clearly state the reason for each deletion. They must state reasons such as death, permanent migration and dual registration.
“De facto NRC”
On 3 November, Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, the DMK, approached the Supreme Court against the SIR. The party called it a “de facto NRC” and compared it to the controversial National Register of Citizens.
According to those opposed to SIR, it requires voters to provide proof akin to citizenship, which defeats the legal purpose of revising electoral rolls. They believe thousands of genuine voters could be removed without due process, affecting free and fair elections.
Is SIR illegal?
Opposition parties and civil society groups argue that the electoral roll SIR is unconstitutional as it is not governed by the Representation of the People Act (ROPA) 1950 or the Voter Registration Rules 1960. They argue that the ECI cannot use Article 324 to circumvent these laws.
They point out that Section 28(3) of ROPA requires any new procedure for electoral rolls to be officially notified and brought before Parliament, which has not happened. The SIR also calls for retrospective document reviews using the 2003 deadline, a rule not found in existing laws.
Petitioners argue that the mass recertification process violates court-ordered safeguards such as individual hearings. They argue that this can unfairly disenfranchise vulnerable voters.
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Other reasons
Many states, political parties and civic groups oppose SIR for several other reasons. They allege that the SIR is being used to manipulate electoral rolls for political gain.
They argue that the time allotted for door-to-door verification is too short. This coincides with the monsoon months and major festivals like Christmas and Pongal, which reduce voter turnout.
There are also complaints about operational outages. Booth Level Officers (BLOs) allegedly skipped home visits, did not give correct forms and forced deleted voters to re-register incorrectly.
