Balancing purity of electoral rolls with inclusiveness of the franchise is the central challenge of electoral governance in India. Comment.

Article 326 gives every adult citizen the right to vote. Article 324 gives the ECI "superintendence, direction and control" over preparing electoral rolls [1]. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) shows that a clean roll and a complete roll can work against each other. Reconciling the two is therefore the defining test of electoral governance.

Why purity matters

• Free and fair polls: Entries for dead, shifted and duplicate voters make impersonation possible. The Supreme Court (2026 INSC 564) upheld SIR under Sec. 21(3), RP Act, 1950, finding it has a direct nexus with free and fair elections [1].
• Mobility: High migration and unreported deaths leave rolls out of date unless they are revised intensively.
• Built-in safeguards: SIR runs in phases. It has house-to-house enumeration by BLOs, a window for claims and objections, and Special Roll Observers [2][3].

Why inclusiveness is at risk

• Scale of exclusion: Only about 7.24 crore of Bihar's 7.89 crore electors made it onto the draft roll, so over 65 lakh names were dropped [4].
• "Absent" is not the same as ineligible: A seasonal migrant worker looks exactly like someone who has moved away for good.
• Burden of proof shifts to the voter: A name on the roll carries a presumption of citizenship. The Court held that this can be rebutted only through a "proper and appropriate inquiry" [1]. In practice, the poor, migrants and women who moved after marriage struggle most to produce old documents.
• Unchecked discretion: BLOs were given wide powers without uniform criteria, so similar cases can be decided differently [1].
• Accountability gap: No official body audits what SIR actually did. As a result, a lawyers' association has set up a panel of former judges to inquire into SIR's consequences [5].

Reconciling the two

• Judicial safeguard: Deletion from the roll is not a finding on citizenship. Such cases must go to the authorities under the Citizenship Act, and names must be restored if citizenship is confirmed [1].
• Transparency: Publish booth-wise deletion lists with reasons as standard practice.
• Verification before deletion: Require a recorded second visit or a notice before deleting an "absent" voter.
• Time-bound appeals: Decide all appeals before polling day.

Purity and inclusiveness are not rivals. They are two halves of electoral integrity, because a roll that is clean but incomplete fails as surely as one that is complete but padded. Transparent, verifiable procedures that keep the burden of proof on the State, not the voter, can deliver both. This would honour the promise of Article 326 and SDG 16.7's call for inclusive, representative decision-making.