Discuss the constitutional and legal basis of the Election Commission's power to conduct Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Does large-scale deletion of names raise concerns about the right to vote?

Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls in the Election Commission of India (ECI) [1]. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) draws on this mandate, but its scale has made the balance between roll purity and inclusiveness the real question.

Constitutional and statutory basis

• Article 324 — plenary power over preparation and revision of rolls, giving the ECI wide administrative discretion [1].
• Article 326 — universal adult suffrage: every citizen aged 18 and above, not otherwise disqualified, is "entitled to be registered" as a voter [1]. Revision must serve registration, not defeat it.
• Representation of the People Act, 1950 — the operative statute for preparation and revision of rolls, permitting a special revision of a constituency for recorded reasons [2].
• Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 — prescribes enumeration, draft publication, and disposal of claims and objections [3]. SIR is thus a document-based re-verification, distinct from routine summary revision, first used in Bihar (2025) [5].

Judicial position

• The Supreme Court permitted the Bihar SIR to proceed rather than staying it, while directing the ECI to consider Aadhaar, ration card and voter ID as acceptable proof [4] — supervision of procedure, not invalidation of the power.

Concerns about the right to vote

• Draft rolls in States such as Telangana and Karnataka show deletions approaching a fifth of electors, with several capital-city constituencies losing far more — hard to square with "trimming bloated rolls".
• Migrants and the urban poor bear the heaviest documentation burden; intra-State relocation should transfer an entry, not delete it.
• Deletion reasons ("shifted"/"absent") reported only in aggregate weaken independent verification.
• Countervailing safeguards exist — repeat BLO visits, reasons recorded, and a statutory claims-and-objections window [3] — but they work only if electors and parties actually invoke them.

Purity of rolls and universal suffrage are complementary, not competing, goals. Disaggregated disclosure of deletion reasons, proactive notice to affected electors, and an extended objection window would let the ECI meet its Article 324 mandate while honouring the Article 326 promise of an inclusive franchise.