“SIR is de novo preparation of voter list. This has not been done before. Why the rush? Why create a situation where 30 BLOs have taken their lives,” asked advocate Prashant Bhushan. File | Photo credit: The Hindu
A petitioner challenging the constitutionality of the Special Intensive Review (SIR) exercise argued in the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the Election Commission of India has turned into a “despot” who has turned “suspicions” over the purity of the electoral roll into a massive nationwide survey that may lead not only to disenfranchisement but also to the homelessness of many.
“Can suspicion lead to not only disenfranchisement but homelessness? Doubt, suspicion leading to homelessness. What is the basis of this power,” asked lawyer Vrinda Grover, appearing for the petitioners, during her submissions before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant.
She argued that the SIR thwarted the vision of the Constitution by allowing for mass scrutiny of citizenship by the Election Commission through executive order rather than parliamentary legislation.
The Electoral Commission (EC), on the other hand, asserted its power to “assess citizenship” for the purposes of registration in the voter lists. The Electoral Authority argued that its plenary power to control citizenship derives directly from Article 324, which empowers it to supervise and control the conduct of elections. He also argued that Parliament’s power to pass election laws under Article 327 must be consistent with the powers of the EC plenary.
Advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi argued that this was the first time since the first elections in 1950 that the EC had prepared electoral rolls from a “clean slate”. Earlier elections were held by adding or removing names from existing lists. It has never happened that the voter list was deleted.
“SIR is de novo preparation of voter list. This has not been done before. Why the rush? Why create a situation where 30 BLOs have taken their lives,” asked Mr Bhushan.
Mr. Bhushan said that short windows were provided to fill the enumeration forms and that the lists were not available in machine-readable format.
“If you give plenary powers to the EC, it becomes a despot. Many people in this country see the EC as a despot,” he said.
This remark led the Chief Justice to warn Mr. Bhushan to limit his submissions to his submissions.
Earlier in the hearing, senior advocate AM Singhvi said the reasons given by the EC for holding the SIR, such as rapid urbanization and frequent migration, were general.
“India is no more rural than urban. India is suburban,” Mr. Singhvi said. He said that both urbanization and migration are general and insufficient reasons for holding a massive exercise like the SIR on voter rolls.
Mr. Singhvi said that the EC, through the SIR process, has included the citizens in the list of presumptive citizenship.
“Every citizen is supposed to prove that he is indeed an Indian citizen. The EC has empowered itself to investigate citizenship. The law actually says that if I don’t get foreign citizenship, I should be treated as an Indian citizen. Here, the citizen is put on the guest list without any prior notice,” said Mr. Singhvi.
Published – 02 Dec 2025 20:54 IST
