Critically examine the legal basis and procedural safeguards of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is a house-to-house re-verification of electoral rolls drawing authority from Article 324 (superintendence of elections), the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 [1]. Its purifying mandate is legally sound; the controversy lies in how it has been executed.

Legal basis: firm in principle

• Roll revision is a statutory duty, not discretion — removing deceased, shifted and duplicate entries protects the purity of adult suffrage under Article 326.
• The 1950 Act read with the 1960 Rules expressly provides for intensive revision, and the Supreme Court has upheld SIR's legitimacy in principle.
• The ERO is the statutory authority on eligibility, giving roll decisions a quasi-judicial character.

Safeguards the framework provides

• Due process before deletion: draft roll publication, a claims-and-objections window, notice, hearing and a speaking order by the ERO, with appeal.
• Collegiality: Section 10 of the CEC and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023 requires business to be transacted unanimously as far as possible, and otherwise by majority [2].

Where the safeguards have thinned

• Form is substance: Form 6 reportedly began asking whether applicants, parents or grandparents figured in the last SIR roll — a change to a statutory form without amending the 1960 Rules is ultra vires, and it shifts the burden of proof onto poor and migrant citizens [1].
• Automation over adjudication: software-generated "logical discrepancies" flagged around 60 lakh electors in West Bengal, while field officials reportedly lacked full ERONet access — a flag the ERO cannot examine is a decision without a hearing.
• Collegiality deficit: recorded objections by two of three Commissioners were reportedly overridden; majority rule cannot operate if files never reach all members [2].
• Structural weakness: ECs lack removal parity with the CEC, and the ECI still has no independent secretariat [3].

SIR's objective is constitutionally legitimate, but legitimacy of ends cannot cure defects of means. Amending the Rules before altering forms, mandating ERO-level verification and speaking orders before any deletion, an independent audit of the centralised database, and accepting the long-pending recommendations of removal parity and an independent secretariat [3] would restore confidence — making the roll, as Article 326 intends, inclusive as well as clean.