ECI’s reasons for SIR untenable, Opposition parties tell SC

The Election Commission’s reasons like ‘rapid urbanisation’ and ‘frequent migration’ for undertaking special intensive revision of electoral rolls in various states are “untenable,” and its power to revise rolls of any constituency does not empower it to do it pan-India, the Supreme Court was told on Tuesday.

These strong arguments were advanced by senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for one of the petitioners, before a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, which continued for the third consecutive day its hearing on a batch of petitions challenging the legality of the EC’s ongoing intensive revision of electoral rolls in several states.

“If the reasons are common, they must have a rational nexus. Here even the generic reasons are the most generic of all, rapid urbanisation and frequent migration. Urbanisation has been ongoing for many years. When does an area move from rural to ‘rurban’ and then to fully urban. Rapid urbanisation cannot be a ground... (for SIR),” Singhvi said.

At the fag end of the hearing, the bench took strong note of the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan, terming the EC as a ‘despot’.

He termed the decision of undertaking SIR “unprecedented”, saying, “For the first time, a voters’ list is being prepared from a clean slate. This is a de-novo preparation, not a special revision.”

He questioned the haste in the exercise and linked the pressure on ground staff to reports of “30 BLOs having committed suicide”, and referenced a media investigation indicating that “over five lakh duplicate voters remain even after SIR”.

He said many perceive the EC as acting like a “despot”.

“Let us not make sweeping statements which are not there in the pleadings... Please confine yourself to the pleadings,” the CJI said.

Referring to rules, Singhvi said the poll panel is empowered to undertake special revisions and that too requires specific reasons for each constituency.

“The expression ‘any’ constituency cannot be read loosely and it does not mean ‘all’ (constituencies). Reasons under Section 21(3) are individualised and can never be one-size-fits-all,” he said, adding, “What is being done here overstretches the statute.” Singhvi criticised the EC’s SIR exercise, saying that the Commission had exceeded its statutory powers under Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act. Separately, he accused the EC of “conducting a citizenship test by proxy”.

Singhvi further said that an “intensive revision” cannot be invoked merely for administrative convenience.

He cited Rule 25 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, to argue that any intensive revision must still conform strictly to the statutory framework. To emphasise the requirement of constituency-specific reasons, Singhvi referred to the Thakurdwara case in Uttar Pradesh, the only historical instance of a genuine special revision.

“In Thakurdwara, a detailed inquiry found 15,000 wrongful deletions and 21,000 wrongful additions. That was an individualised exercise based on concrete findings,” he noted, contrasting it with the EC’s current “statewide classification”, which he called “a new innovation” never attempted in 75 years. Singhvi also launched a constitutional challenge, asserting that the EC’s new classification of post-2003 voters into multiple documentary requirement categories violated Article 14’s anti-arbitrariness doctrine, which evolved through landmark cases.

“The EC has no power under Article 324 to determine citizenship,” he submitted, citing the Citizenship Act and a few judgments.

He alleged that the guidelines effectively reverse the burden of proof, forcing voters to establish citizenship merely because the EC marks them as “suspected non-citizens”. “This creates a parallel, extra-statutory NRC,” Singhvi said.

Lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay drew the court’s attention to alleged attacks on block-level officers in West Bengal.

“The authorities will take care of it. Don’t worry,” the CJI said. Senior Vrinda Grover, argued that the SIR process, as currently designed, is “structured to exclude”.

She pointed to the sharp decline in the number of women voters on the draft rolls compared to the January 2025 summary revision.

“Women who were on the rolls six months ago are now missing. The drop, from 4 lakh to 79,000, reflects ground realities which affect women differently,” she said.

Grover questioned the legality of the enumeration form, calling it a “creature of the ECI without legislative authority” that dilutes statutory Form 6. “This abridges the rights of vulnerable groups and disproportionately impacts women,” she submitted. The bench will resume the hearing on Thursday, December 4, when Bhushan will commence his submissions.