Balancing electoral roll purity with inclusiveness is a challenge for any large democracy. Discuss with reference to recent Special Intensive Revision exercises in India.

Electoral rolls are the foundation of universal adult franchise under Article 326. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), conducted under Article 324 read with the Representation of the People Act, 1950, seeks to remove bogus entries — but the Bihar and West Bengal exercises show that purity and inclusiveness must advance together, not at each other's cost.

The case for roll purity

• Bloated rolls dilute the value of a genuine vote. Bihar's draft roll dropped about 65 lakh names — roughly 22 lakh deceased, 36 lakh permanently shifted or untraceable, and 7 lakh duplicates [1].
• The Supreme Court (ADR v. ECI, May 2026) upheld the ECI's power to conduct SIR as furthering free and fair elections, relying on notice, hearing, speaking orders and appeal as safeguards [2].
• The demand is not one-sided: of West Bengal's 38.31 lakh SIR appeals, 16.10 lakh challenge wrongful inclusion of names [3].

The inclusiveness cost

• Scale of removal is large: nearly 27 lakh West Bengal electors were marked ineligible after SIR scrutiny [4], and over 22 lakh have appealed their exclusion [3].
• The burden of documentary proof falls hardest on migrants, the poor and women, who are least able to produce legacy records at short notice.

Where the balance actually breaks — remedy design

• Only 19 Appellate Tribunals, set up on the Supreme Court's March 2026 order, serve the whole State [5]; about 37 lakh appeals remain pending [3]. Since rolls freeze before a poll, a pending appeal becomes a de facto exclusion for that election.
• Section 24, RP Act 1950 binds only the citizen — 15 days to appeal to the District Magistrate, 30 days to the Chief Electoral Officer, fee non-refundable — while fixing no deadline for disposal [6].

Purity and inclusiveness clash only when verification outruns remedy. Publishing booth-wise reasons for every deletion, notifying a wide document list upfront, retaining names until exclusion appeals are decided, and adding a statutory disposal deadline alongside more tribunals would make SIR both credible and fair — securing clean rolls without silencing a single genuine voter.