New Delhi: Upholding the legality of the Election Commission of India (ECI) conducting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Bihar electoral rolls, the Supreme Court dealt with four major complex questions of law—which the petitioners alleged had been violated.
The case has its genesis in the commission’s order under Article 324 of the Constitution of India, read with Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (RP Act), directing an SIR of the electoral rolls in every Assembly constituency of Bihar. The commission announced the commencement of SIR on 28 June 2025.
In Wednesday’s judgment, the court adjudicated on four legal questions. In this backdrop, ThePrint looks at: EC’s power under the Constitution; the timing and nexus of the SIR process; the deletion of voters from the rolls; and MHA’s exclusive authority on citizenship claims—examining why the petitioners opposed it, what was the ECI’s stance, and what the court has held in its ruling.
Question 1: ECI’s authority
The first legal question arises from the Constitution itself. Article 324 deals with the powers vested in an Election Commission relating to the superintendence, direction and control of the elections.
Petitioners: “The EC under Article 324 is not a freestanding reservoir of plenary power that may be invoked by the legislative framework and gives no power to the ECI to initiate and conduct the SIR. The EC can only act under this article in ‘interstitial spaces’—when the Parliament (under article 327) has not made any law. Wherever the Parliament has made a law, the commission cannot ‘leapfrog’ it. The EC has devised an entirely new regime of enumeration, documentary scrutiny, inclusion and deletion—even though the Parliament already has these topics covered under Article 327 of the Constitution, namely the Representation of the People Acts, 1950 and 1951, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.”
ECI: “While Article 327 empowers Parliament to make laws with respect to elections, such power is subject to constitutional provisions—meaning Parliamentary legislation cannot detract from what the Constitution itself provides. The power under Article 324(1) is wide enough to equip the commission to deal with the myriad situations that arise in the context of electoral roll preparation, and no narrow or restrictive construction of that power is warranted.
“A 1977 judgment of Supreme Court said the Commission is not confined to the passive role of merely implementing pre-existing rules in a mechanical fashion. It may, in aid of the constitutional objective, lay down procedural modalities, provided they are not contrary to an express statutory prohibition.
Court: “The proposition advanced by the Petitioners that Article 324 operates exclusively in the residual interstices, completely untouched by statute is legally untenable. It is incorrect to posit that once Parliament legislates on a particular subject, the commission is entirely disabled from exercising its vested constitutional powers.
“The ECI’s supervisory authority is inherently expansive—retains the absolute constitutional mandate to step into vacuous areas left unoccupied by legislation. In situations where the enacted laws and rules are silent or inadequate to meet emerging contingencies, the commission is empowered to take necessary steps that will ensure the purity of the electoral process.”
Question 2: Procedure and methodology of SIR
The second question was on the interpretation of 21(3) of the Representation of People Act. The section states that notwithstanding anything stated in 21(2), the ECI may at any time, for reasons to be recorded, direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of a constituency in such manner as it may think fit—provided that subject to the other provisions of this Act, the electoral roll for the constituency, as in force at the time of the issue of any such direction, shall continue to be in force until the completion of the special revision.
Petitioners: “The ECI anchoring the SIR under this section is misconceived as this section only empowers the commission to direct a special revision of an electoral roll with respect to “any constituency or part of a constituency” and is constituency-specific and part-specific. It does not contemplate or authorise a sweeping statewide or nationwide revision exercise of the kind that has been initiated by the ECI.
“A special revision is envisaged as an extraordinary measure, and it is meant to be deployed in exceptional circumstances, confined to specific geographical units where an identified exigency warrants departure from the routine revision process.
“About the manner in which ECI initiated the SIR, the poll body did not disclose any valid reasons that could justify the initiation of an SIR of this magnitude.
“Most importantly, the SIR called upon enrolled electors to re-establish their credentials through a wholly new and onerous process, effectively inverting the presumption of citizenship and places upon the elector an affirmative burden of proving anew what the law already presumes in their favour. This strikes at the very foundation of the statutory scheme governing electoral rolls, which is premised on the principle that a name once included upon due verification carries presumptive validity unless displaced through the procedure prescribed by law.
ECI: “This provision was deliberately enacted to vest plenary powers in the commission in extraordinary circumstances, and once an SIR is directed, the commission is fully authorised to prescribe the manner in which it shall be conducted. The commission has, in the present case, furnished cogent and specific reasons for initiating the SIR, which include large-scale migration owing to rapid urbanisation, illegal cross-border migrations, intra-state migrations, and widespread duplications in the rolls.
“Plus, the ‘notwithstanding’ clause frees the commission for the purpose of a special revision, from the procedural limitations otherwise attached to the ordinary revision process envisaged under Section 21(2).
“With respect to the geographical scope of the SIR exercise, the use of the word ‘any’ before ‘constituency’ in Section 21(3) plainly indicates that the provision can embrace all constituencies of a state within a single SIR. Section 21(3) is a conscious attempt by the legislature to confer the power to undertake a special revision of the electoral rolls on the commission.”
Court: “Section 21(3) confers a flexible and enabling power, departing from the regime of ordinary revision. It ensures continuity of a roll already in place until the completion of the special revision. The expression ‘at any time’, which dispels temporal limitations and authorises the commission to act whenever the integrity of electoral roll so demands.
“The phrase ‘for any constituency or part of a constituency’ further imparts territorial flexibility and permits a targeted intervention tailored as per the exigencies at hand. Crucially, the stipulation of ‘reasons to be recorded’ operates as a substantive safeguard and ensures that the exercise of such seemingly untrammelled power is anchored in demonstrable justification and, in fact, remains amenable to judicial scrutiny.
“Finally, the words ‘in such manner as it may think fit’ vest the commission with broad procedural discretion and allow it to devise appropriate modalities for the revision.
“On the timing and reasons of SIR in Bihar, the court is satisfied by the two reasons given by the ECI justifying the exercise. First, a demographic change due to rapid urbanisation and migration in the last 20 years since the intensive revision in 2003 which has led to repeated, multiple and defective entries on the electoral roll. Second, the mandate of the commission under Article 326 (right to vote) to ensure that only Indian citizens are on the electoral roll.
“Reading ‘any’ as ‘only’ and not ‘many’ or ‘all’ would narrow and restrict the scope of powers to conduct special revision… Such an interpretation would lead to a situation where the commission would be required to issue a separate notification for each and every constituency, regardless of whether there are state-wide reasons polluting electoral rolls. This would render the special provision nugatory and must be avoided.
“On the presumption of citizenship aspect, it is an evidentiary presumption, one that facilitates administrative and adjudicatory processes by dispensing with the need to re-prove foundational facts in every instance. Such a presumption cannot be elevated into a rule of substantive law that forecloses enquiry. To do so would be to conflate a rebuttable evidentiary device with a conclusive legal fiction, a position neither contemplated by the statute nor supported by precedent. The presumption of validity attached to an entry at a given point in time cannot be treated as a perpetual guarantee against scrutiny, particularly in the face of a constitutionally sanctioned exercise aimed at ensuring the continued accuracy of the rolls.”
Question 3: Deletion of names
The third question is on Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which sets out the procedure for removing names on the rolls on grounds of death, migration and disqualification, and requires the Electoral Registration Officer to prepare a list of names, exhibit it, invite claims and objections and give a reasonable opportunity for a hearing to a voter before deletion.
Petitioners: “Existing voters can be deleted merely by not filling their enumeration form and without giving them any notice as provided under Rule 21A. An existing voter filling the enumeration form can also be arbitrarily excluded without any guidelines for the same. The introduction of a new enumeration form imposes a fresh and onerous evidentiary burden upon persons whose entitlement to be on the rolls has already been duly established.
“For instance, the exclusion of documents previously accepted as valid proof of identity and residence, without any reasoned justification, compounds this unfairness manifold. The grant of excessive and largely unchecked powers to BLOs in the verification process, without adequate safeguards, standardised criteria, or mechanisms for oversight, creates ground for abuse and arbitrariness at the very grassroots of administration.”
ECI: “The factors identified by the commission, namely non-reporting of deaths, intra-state and inter-state migration, and the enrolment of persons who are disqualified from registration on grounds of ineligibility, map directly and precisely onto these statutory grounds for deletion. The initiation of the SIR exercise to address these very conditions is, therefore, not only consistent with the legislative scheme but is, in a meaningful sense, compelled by it. The commission, in undertaking this exercise, was performing a function which the statute itself recognises as necessary and appropriate.”
Court: “Holistically, the scheme underlying the SIR guidelines reveals that the safeguards embedded in Rule 21A of the 1960 Rules have not been abrogated, but are instead operationalised within a broader and structured revision framework. The essential elements of Rule 21A of the 1960 Rules, namely, identification of doubtful entries, publication of such cases, notice to the concerned elector, and a determination after considering objections, find clear reflection across the various stages of the SIR process. The form may differ, but the substance remains intact.
“The requirement of affording a ‘reasonable opportunity’ to show cause, as envisaged in the proviso to Rule 21A of the 1960 Rules, thus stands fully incorporated. Equally, the contention that non-inclusion in the draft roll results in automatic or final deletion cannot be accepted. The draft roll is, by design, provisional.”
Question 4: MHA’s exclusive authority
The 4th question is of the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, 1961, according to which the determination of whether a person is or is not a citizen of India is a matter that falls exclusively within the domain of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Petitioners: “Under this, the determination of whether a person is or is not a citizen of India is a matter that falls squarely and exclusively within the domain of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The commission neither has the constitutional mandate nor the institutional competence to usurp this function under the pretext of electoral roll revision. It is constitutionally impermissible.”
ECI: “The power to examine the citizenship of a person claiming enrolment flows directly from its constitutional mandate, which expressly disqualifies non-citizens from being registered as electors. The duty to maintain the accuracy of electoral rolls necessarily entails a corresponding authority to verify whether a person satisfies the conditions of eligibility, including citizenship.
“Plus, Section 9(2) of the Citizenship Act, 1955, is concerned solely with the termination of citizenship upon voluntary acquisition of foreign citizenship and does not operate as an exhaustive provision governing all inquiries into citizenship.
“Even otherwise, the commission’s exercise in the present case is not a determination of citizenship per se but an enquiry into eligibility for enrolment, which is a function squarely within its constitutional remit.
Court: “The formal determination of citizenship, particularly where it entails adjudication of status or deprivation thereof, falls within the exclusive domain of the competent authority under the Citizenship Act. Section 16 of the RP Act explicitly disqualifies non-citizens from being registered in the electoral roll. The consequence of this provision is clear: Citizenship is a condition precedent for enrolment. The commission, therefore, cannot discharge its obligation to maintain a valid electoral roll without satisfying itself that persons included therein meet this threshold requirement.
“While the rules allocate the subject of citizenship to the Ministry of Home Affairs for purposes of governmental business, they do not denude other constitutional authorities of the incidental power to examine citizenship insofar as it is relevant to the discharge of their own functions.”
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Supreme Court upholds validity of SIR, says EC competent authority to conduct exercise