Explained| Petitioners' Arguments In Supreme Court Against SIR
Anmol Kaur Bawa
12 Jan 2026 11:31 AM IST
2025 was a year that had the Supreme Court occupied with one much-debated and discussed issue : Special Intensive Revision, the 'SIR'.The bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi concluded its hearing in December 2025 on the arguments of petitioners who have challenged the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) initiated by the Election Commission of India (ECI) across various states.
The ECI commenced its arguments on January 6, 2026. This article sets out to unpack the concept of SIR and the legal controversy surrounding it.
What Is SIR? How Does The ECI Plan To Implement It ?
Simply put, the SIR is a process which aims to create electoral rolls from scratch. In the process, a comprehensive update and verification of the voters on the rolls is done by the ECI at grass-root level. The ECI's officials, known as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) would be carrying out house-to-house enumeration, which includes the collection of enumeration forms and intensive verification of entries.
The first announcement of SIR by the ECI was on June 24, 2025, limited only to the state of Bihar, ahead of the State Assembly Elections. Subsequently, a second phase of the SIR was announced on October 27, 2025. The second phase will commence from November 4 and covers 12 States and Union Territories for the 2025-26 cycle.
The second phase covers Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The key reasons for conducting the SIR, as stated by the ECI are “ rapid urbanization, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, non-reporting of deaths and inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants have necessitated the conduct of an intensive revision so as to ensure integrity and preparation of error-free electoral rolls.”
Over 13 petitioners, including NGOs, leaders from various political parties and individual activists, have filed pleas challenging the SIR process. These include- the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) (lead petitioner), PUCL, Yogendra Yadav, Mahua Moitra (TMC MP), Manoj Jha (RJD MP), KC Venugopal(Congress MP), Supriya Sule (NCP SP), to name a few.
What Are The Key Constitutional & Statutory Provisions Relevant To The Issue?
Article 324 - details that the superintendence, direction and control of elections is vested in the ECI;
Article 325- mandates that no person can be excluded from the general voters' roll in any constituency purely on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or any of them;
Article 326 (which is also referenced by the ECI in SIR press release) - provides for universal adult sufferage and states: “ The elections to the House of the People and to the Legislative Assembly of every State shall be on the basis of adult suffrage; that is to say, every person who is a citizen of India and who is not less thaneighteen years of age on such date as may be fixed in that behalf by or under any law made by the appropriate Legislature and is not otherwise disqualified under this Constitution or any law made by the appropriate Legislature on the ground of non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt or illegal practice, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter at any such election.”
Section 21 of the Representation of People Act, 1950 - details on the preparation and revision of electoral rolls. S. 21(3) states “ Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (2), the Election Commission 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 so directed.”
S. 21(2) details on the summary revisions of the rolls before each general elections/ state assembly election.
Key Arguments Raised By Petitioners Who Challenge The SIR :
Determination Of Citizenship Through SIR Not Within ECI's Mandate:
A major argument raised by the petitioners was that the SIR was an indirect 'NRC-like process', making ECI a de facto authority to verify citizenship. The petitioners argued that wherever doubts on the eligibility of the voter are raised, they have to be dealt with as per the process laid down under S.16 of the RP Act.
S. 16(1) of the Act states that a person is disqualified from the electoral roll if it is proven that (1) he is not a citizen of India; (2) he is of unsound mind or declared so; (3) he is disqualified from voting under any law relating to corrupt practises and offences related to elections.
However, by the process of SIR, the ECI creates a temporary list of voters and puts the burden on the individuals to prove through specific documents that they are citizens in order to be on the voters' list. The petitioners emphasised that the issue of determining whether a person is a citizen or not lies in the domain of the Central Government and Foreigners Tribunals through S. 8 and 9 of the Citizenship Act.
Explaining the scenario at a grassroots level, the petitioner flagged concerns over the authority given to the BLO to reconsider citizenship under Paragraph 7.7.8 of ECI's Manual on Electoral Rolls
"It is clear that if the electoral registration officer has any doubt regarding the registration of any person applying for registration or considering any such objection against a person already enrolled in an electoral roll, he should refer the case to the Union Government, Ministry of Home Affairs, for determining the issue under the Citizenship Act."
The petitioners underline that under this provision, requiring EROs to scrutinise citizenship documents, flag suspected non-citizens or report them to the Home Department is ultra vires the Constitution and creates an indirect NRC without Parliamentary sanction.
The process was also contrary to the decision of the Top Court in Lal Babu Hussein (1995) . As per the Lal Babu Hussein judgment, a person included in the voters' list is presumed to be an Indian citizen and the burden is on the objector to prove otherwise. However, in the SIR, the entire burden is reversed, and the voters are asked to prove citizenship even if they are included in the voters' list.
Aftermath Of Deletion From Rolls - Suspension Of Citizenship :
Consequent to the argument on how ECI does not have the power to determine citizenship, the petitioners went a notch further to contend that deletion of names from the rolls would cause a perilous situation of a 'suspended citizenship'.
In the event a person's voter eligibility is doubted by the BLO/ ERO and referred to the Central government, the ECI deletes the name of the voter from the rolls. The petitioners stressed that if the BLO ends up excluding the person from the electoral roll, then he will be excluded from all other government scheme benefits in the country.
It was further submitted that the Foreigners Tribunal mechanism and the Citizenship Act already provide the statutory route for determining doubtful citizenship, and any inquiry must follow the Representation of the People Act (ROPA), not independent suspicion by BLOs.
Enumeration Forms Floated In SIR Lack Statutory Recognition:
The petitioners pointed out that the enumeration forms, which are required to be filled and verified in the present SIR process, have no statutory backing as the RP Act or Rules.
While the ECI has relied upon Article 324 for sourcing its power to conduct the SIR, Article 324 has to be read in conjunction with Article 327. Article 327 bestows on the Parliament the power to make provisions on the preparation of electoral rolls. It was argued that so far the enumeration forms had not been assented by the Parliament under Article 327.
The petitioners also relied upon the decision in AC Jose v Sivan Pillai (1984), which held that "where there is an Act and there are express Rules made thereunder, it is not open to the Commission to override the Act or the Rules and pass orders in direct disobedience to the mandate contained in the Act or the Rules. The Powers of the Commission are meant to supplement rather than supplant the law (both statute and Rules) in the matter of superintendence, direction and Control as provided by Article 324."
SIR Cannot Be Done 'En Masse', S.21(3) Allows Only Constituency Specific SIR :
The petitioners stressed that S. 21(3) did not allow for a blanket SIR to be conducted. The phrase “ direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of a constituency” cannot be interpreted to mean a group of states - this would lead to 'massification' of a process done only under exceptional circumstances and for individual constituencies or a part of it.
No State-Specific Reasons Given By ECI :
The petitioners contended that while reasons for carrying out SIR in Bihar were given, which included 'rapid urbanisation' and 'frequent migration'; not specific reasons were listed for carrying out the SIR in the other 12 states/ UTs. It was argued that applying similar reasons across different states/ regions without actually assessing the parameters of migration and urbanisation was mechanical and devoid of logic.
It was highlighted that the selection of the 12 states/ UTs was done without considering that some states, like Chhattisgarh donot have elections before December 2028, yet are being put through a hurried SIR process.
Process Lacks Procedural Transparency; Filled With Loopholes:
The petitioners also flagged concerns over the procedure adopted by the ECI, alleging a lack of fairness and public accountability.
(a) It was pointed out that ECI's refusal to publish machine-readable data on the number of voters added or deleted from the final list aggravated the issue of transparency.
The petitioners stated that during the Bihar SIR, 3.5 lakh names were deleted from the draft electoral. However, between the time of publication of the final roll and the time of voting, they have added another 3.5 lakh names.
(b) It was argued that during the Bihar SIR, the ECI had sent 'cyclostyled' notices to 26 Lakh persons, meaning that the same notices were issued to 26 lakh people without ascribing the reasons for suspecting their eligibility as a voter.
(c) As per the official disclosure of the ECI, 65 lakh voters were deleted from the draft rolls in Bihar. This left the list with only 7 crore 24 lakh voters. Subsequently, in the final list, 21 lakh voters were further added through Form 6 (application for inclusion of name in electoral rolls), during the period of claims and objections.
The issue with this is that for filling out Form 6, persons whose names were deleted from the draft rolls have to provide a declaration stating they are a new voter, despite being present on the previous electoral rolls.
(d) On the issue of 'bulk electors', it was underlined that if an address has more than 10 voters living there, the ECI is required to send an officer to verify it personally. However, there are now instances where one single address has listed 500 voters alone.
(e) The petitioners also submitted that during the Bihar SIR, there seemed to be an increase in duplication of entries instead of weeding them out.
Referring to Activist Yogender Yadav's rejoinder affidavit dated 29th November/ 1st October, it was pointed out that when some people carried out de-depulication on their personal end of the Bihar rolls, it was found that in the draft rolls, there were 4.9 lakh duplicate entries within a single constituency. A total of 59 lakh duplicate entries were found across different constituencies in Bihar in the draft rolls. In the final rolls, the duplicate entries increased from 59 lakhs.
Part II of the Explainer on the ECI's submissions before the Court will be published soon.