Supreme Court Upholds Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (May 27, 2026)

On May 27, 2026, a bench of the Supreme Court of India comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi issued a significant judgment upholding the Election Commission of India's authority to conduct the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The case, Association for Democratic Reforms and Ors. v. Election Commission of India (cited as 2026 INSC 564), disposed of writ petitions challenging the SIR order issued by the Election Commission on June 24, 2025.

The SIR was a large-scale exercise designed to clean electoral rolls by removing duplicate entries, deceased voters, and those who had permanently migrated, initially focused on Bihar Assembly constituencies. The revision exercise, for which voters had to submit documentation by July 25, 2025, resulted in approximately 65 lakh (6.5 million) persons being excluded from the draft electoral roll, which was finalized on September 30, 2025. This represented approximately 5-6% of Bihar's total electorate.

The petitioners, led by senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi representing Association for Democratic Reforms and allied organizations, raised three principal constitutional objections. First, they argued that Article 324 of the Constitution could not be invoked as a source of power where Parliament had comprehensively legislated through the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Second, they contended that Section 21(3) of that Act, by referring to "any constituency or part of a constituency," did not authorize a state-wide exercise. Third, they argued that the SIR shifted the burden of proof onto individual citizens and that Bihar's high rates of poverty and migration could disenfranchise millions, while the compressed timeline was impractical given the need to train 100,000 booth-level officers during monsoon conditions. The petitioners also raised fundamental rights concerns under Articles 14, 19, and 21 regarding equality, freedom of expression, and the right to life.

The Court upheld the constitutional and statutory validity of the SIR exercise. Key holdings included: (1) Article 324 remains "a living source of power" conferring broad authority on the Election Commission for conducting free and fair elections, operating within statutory constraints; (2) Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, authorizes special revisions flexibly and permits state-wide exercises when circumstances justify them; (3) inclusion in electoral rolls creates only a "rebuttable presumption" that does not prevent systematic revisions; and (4) the measures adopted in the SIR "are not manifestly excessive or disproportionate" and are proportionate to the legitimate objective of securing free and fair elections.

Critically, the Court drew a distinction between electoral inquiry and citizenship determination. While the Election Commission may conduct "limited enquiry into electoral eligibility" and can examine citizenship documents for electoral purposes, it cannot make final citizenship determinations. The Court held that such administrative inquiry "does not constitute a strict legal determination of citizenship status." Final citizenship determinations remain the exclusive domain of competent central government agencies under the Citizenship Act, and the Court directed the Election Commission to forward names deleted on citizenship grounds to the Central Government within four weeks for further adjudication.

The ruling significantly strengthened the Election Commission's constitutional authority to undertake large-scale electoral roll verification exercises across multiple states. However, it also reflected concerns about vulnerable populations. Critics of the SIR have raised significant concerns about its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, including Dalit voters, women (particularly young married women who migrated to different districts), and religious minorities. Regional political parties alleged the exercise targeted the exclusion of women, minorities, and Dalit voters. Concerns also centered on weak procedural safeguards, as those excluded from rolls risk entanglement with Foreigners Tribunals that lack judicial independence and operate with inconsistent procedures. Observers noted that exclusion can initiate "a decades-long journey towards statelessness and expulsion," with documented cases of Indian citizens being mistakenly deported. The SIR had removed approximately 5.2 crore (52 million) people from electoral rolls across twelve states by the time of this judgment, equivalent to India's entire 1951 electorate. Following this May 2026 judgment upholding the SIR, the Election Commission formally launched Phase-II of the exercise on November 4, 2025 (note: the phase-II launch occurred prior to this judgment), extending the SIR across 9 states and 3 union territories, covering approximately 51 crore electors across 321 districts and 1,843 Assembly constituencies.