Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo
ashwanikc2012@gmail.com
Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls by the Election Commission of India (ECI) remained the most debated and discussed issue during the year 2025. It occupied the head and front lines in media, political circles, courts, legislatures and finally now in the parliament as well. The discussion in the parliament on this topic on 9th December, 2025 assumes a great importance as it may lead the parliament finally to some major electoral reforms in future course of time as well.
SIR is a part of the constitutionally sanctioned electoral process in India that the ECI is supposed to undertake periodically. It is in a way the periodic ‘cleansing process’ of the electoral rolls at the national level. Unfortunately, some important constitutional and legal processes that were supposed to be taken up earlier got delayed due to a number of reasons, some genuine and some not-genuine. These processes included the Delimitation exercise of the electoral constituencies, Census at the national level and the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls. The last SIR was done in the year 2003 during the NDA rule when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister of India.
Two years ago, the government of India constituted a High Level Committee on simultaneous elections in the country. The Committee was headed by the former President of the Republic, Ram Nath Kovind. It comprised a team of wonderful, knowledgeable and experienced politicians, legal and constitutional experts and former senior bureaucrats. This committee after a hectic and thorough discussions with all the concerned stakeholders submitted its report to the President of India in March-2024 with positive recommendations to the government for simultaneous poll in the country primarily for the parliament and the legislative assemblies of the states.
The government is expected to take a decision on it followed by a number of steps at the level of parliament and the Election Commission of India. The parliament has already approved 33% reservation for women in the legislature which includes all the assemblies and the parliament. This is to be effective from the 2029 general elections. The exercises for the census and the delimitation of the electoral constituencies are also to be initiated in the next two years. The government is seriously focussed on completing all these constitutional exercises well before the year 2029.
In this context, the ECI took a decision to cleanse the electoral rolls of all the fake, duplicate and superfluous voters from the lists of voters. The constitution specifies a specific process for the ECI in this regard which is called the SIR (special intensive revision) of the electoral rolls. When the last SIR was done in the year 2003, it was expected that the ECI and the government of India would undertake a similar exercise in the next ten years. But that didn’t happen and it got further delayed by almost a decade now. When the ECI took a decision to initiate this constitutional exercise in concurrence with the government of India, there was an unnecessary uproar in the camp of the opposition parties.
This uproar was so loud that it eclipsed all other issues and there was total focus on this issue of SIR at almost every level. SIR is basically aimed at updating the electoral rolls and there are only two qualifications to be eligible for becoming voters in India. These include the age of 18 years and being a bonafide citizen of India. It is incumbent upon the voters to provide the documentary evidence in support of both the qualifications to the ECI. It is obvious that some voters would get deleted and some would make an entry into the rolls when the exercise is taken at the ground level. The whole exercise is also to ensure that no ineligible voter is included in the electoral rolls.
Generally speaking, there are four reasons for deletion of voters from the lists i.e death of voters, migration of voters to other areas, duplication of name in the voters list at different places and/or bogus entries at different booths of one and the same person within the same constituency. When SIR is done by the Booth Level Officers (BLO), it is incumbent upon them to visit every house to confirm the voter’s presence in the constituency. They get the forms duly filled and signed by each voter supported by presentation of the relevant documents as required by law supporting the two required qualifications.
All voters in India have a right to get registered as a voter at one place only. No citizen of India can have more than one vote and should ideally be registered in only one electoral constituency of the country. Having voted twice in an election is forbidden by law and is a crime. Long before, the ECI wanted to have all voters linked to their AADHAR cards in order to cleanse the voter lists of duplication problems. However, due to opposition from certain political parties at the political level and also in various courts including the Supreme Court of India, this link couldn’t be legally established. The ECI and the government of India were restrained by the Apex Court from moving in this direction.
Every citizen of India is supposed to have his or her date of birth certificate and the document confirming his or her being a bonafide citizen of India. In this context, the ECI is within its rights to ask for the documents from the voters so that their registration is confirmed afresh through the process of SIR. The ECI in this connection after a long discussion with the government and the other stakeholders took a decision to initiate the exercise of SIR in the year 2025. In order to start with Bihar, which was going to the polls in the month of November 2025, it was chosen as an ideal state to begin the process. Accordingly, the exercise was initiated in the first half of the election year in the state.
The moment this announcement was made by the ECI, some opposition parties and groups and particularly the Congress opposed the idea of SIR and called the whole process as an attempt to make theft of the votes in favour of the ruling party at the centre. Rahul Gandhi, the LoP in the Lok Sabha called it “vote-chori” and also coined the slogan of “vote chor-gadi chor”. He left no stone unturned to make it an issue of huge political and electoral controversy in the country. He thought in terms of bringing a political upheaval in the country through his campaigning on SIR against the ECI and the government of India and appealed to the Gen-Z to come on roads. He argued that the ECI was doing the exercise on behalf of the BJP and said this notwithstanding the fact that the SIR was a duly and constitutionally sanctioned exercise which was undertaken by the ECI a number of times earlier also.
The opposition made all attempts to create legal and constitutional hurdles in the SIR exercise besides converting the whole issue into a political controversy. Rahul Gandhi especially led a ‘vote-adhikar yatra’ in Bihar for three weeks and tried unsuccessfully to convince the public by his arguments in this regard. He was not paid great attention by the masses despite his huge investment in the yatra. Earlier also he blamed the ECI and the EVMs for his consistent failures in the electoral battles. The results of 2024 general elections gave him a false hope that his campaign against the government, BJP and the NDA was working and was thus advised by his close coterie to move into the campaign with more focus and intensity.
Rahul Gandhi took the issue to all available forums and platforms within and outside the country and attacked the ECI and the government besides the BJP and NDA on SIR. Parties, media-groups and lawyers close to him and the opposition camp took the matter to the Supreme Court of India. The ECI submitted before the apex court in no uncertain terms that the ECI was constitutionally authorised to undertake the SIR and stood its ground with firmness. The apex court didn’t stop the ECI or the government from undertaking the SIR and instead upheld the view that the ECI was authorised by the constitution to do the same. Consequent upon the Supreme Court’s decision and the stand of the ECI, the SIR was successfully done in Bihar well before the state elections held in November 2025. The results gave a crushing defeat to the Mahagathbandhan comprising RJD and Congress who were spearheading the campaign against the SIR.
The ECI on the successful completion of the whole exercise in Bihar, announced to go for the SIR in 12 other states including all those states and UTs that are going to the polls in the years 2026-27. The governments in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala again made a desperate attempt to raise the issue in the Supreme Court. However, the apex court didn’t stop the exercise and instead considered the view to extend the dates for the exercise. It is important here to state that there is a lurking fear among the parties in government in these three states about the possibility of deletion of fake voters which are the vote-bank of these parties. These mainly comprise the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan who have got possession of illegal Aadhar Cards, ration cards, voter cards and other identity cards in these states but don’t have documents in regard to their Indian citizenship.
The Supreme Court of India in a recent observation in the case castigated any efforts to give these illegal immigrants any sort of assistance at the cost of the welfare of the original citizens of India. This was a historic view taken by the apex court and the left-liberal cabal of lawyers and former judges wrote a letter in this regard to the CJI criticizing his view. However, this didn’t hold water and there was no change in the apex court’s view in this regard. The West Bengal government led by the TMC supremo, Mamta Bannerji also, after creating a great ruckus on the issue at all available levels, has diluted her stand on the SIR issue. She said that there was a danger of ‘the dismissal of the government in WB in case the reports of constitutional breakdown would be sent to the Centre’ consequent upon opposition to the SIR being conducted by the Election Commission of India that has constitutional power to undertake the exercise.
Special Intensive Revision-SIR has assumed complete constitutional recognition and has also achieved functional success at the ground level particularly after its successful conduct in Bihar (where lakhs of voters got deleted after the exercise) followed by the same exercise in other states. In UP, a large exercise in this regard is already in process; and in certain states dates have already been extended for its completion or are under such consideration. It is hoped that the SIR gets completed by the end of the next year in all states and UTs and the Electoral Rolls would be updated as per the law of the land and to the satisfaction of the all related constitutional bodies of the nation.
(The author is a senior BJP and KP leader)
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