The Supreme Court on Wednesday (May 27) upheld the power of the Election Commission (EC) to conduct Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The court observed that the SIR had a direct nexus to ensuring free and fair elections.
The Supreme Court has directed the EC to forward to the Union Government the names of persons deleted from electoral rolls over doubtful citizenship within four weeks.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi pronounced the judgment. The court examined whether the EC has the powers under Article 326 of the constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Rules made thereunder to carry out the SIR in the present form, Live Law reported.
“When the statute itself authorises a special revision at any time, for reasons to be recorded and in such manner as the Election Commission may deem fit, the impugned exercise cannot be invalidated merely because it does not conform in every respect to the ordinary modalities contemplated for routine revision. In our considered opinion, the impugned SIR does not supplant the Representation of the People Act and the Rules. Rather, it breathes life into the constitutional mandate under Article 324 within the precise statutory contours provided by Section 21(3). Therefore, it cannot be said that the Commission has acted in excess of its statutory powers,” Surya Kant was quoted as saying by Live Law.
The Supreme Court bench observed that the SIR had a “direct nexus to the constitutional goal of ensuring free and fair elections”. It noted that free and fair elections are not only about the voting process but fundamentally depended on the “integrity, accuracy, and credibility of the electoral rolls, which formed the foundation of the democratic process”.
Further, the apex court underlined that the reasons listed by the EC such as passage of more than four decades since the last intensive revision, large-scale additions and deletions over the years, and rapid urbanisation and migration leading to the possibility of duplication and inaccuracies in the electoral rolls are aimed at “preserving that foundational integrity”.
Most of the petitions were filed in June last year, after the EC decided to conduct the SIR in Bihar. Among the petitioners are the Association for Democratic Reforms, political activist Yogendra Yadav, and Members of Parliament Mahua Moitra (TMC), Manoj Jha (RJD), KC Venugopal (Congress), and Supriya Sule (NCP-SP).
Notably, the first two rounds of SIR were marred by controversies. In West Bengal 2.7 million voters were left to wait for their fate to be decided by 19 judicial tribunals less than two weeks before polls, with even the Supreme Court refusing to grant interim relief. The tribunals eventually decided on a miniscule number of cases before polling day.
Commenting on the SIR process, psephologist Yogendra Yadav told The Wire on May 4, “SIR has introduced a model of curation of voter lists. In this country we knew that voters elected the government. SIR has reversed the process. Now the government can decide who the voters will be. Once that is accepted it completely overturns the presumption of democracy.”
On May 14, the EC has ordered the third phase of its SIR of electoral rolls, covering 16 states and three Union Territories – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Daman and Diu, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, NCT of Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana, Uttarakhand – an exercise in which 3.94 lakh ground-level officials will scrutinise 367.3 million voters.
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